Crowds Surround Us

agile founderings and piecemeal flotations.
The crowd constitutes a gravitational field

that slaps back at the ground, numbed
and maddened by ground’s constant suckling.

The crowd embodies a depression in fabric
more than an attraction. Its angled, arteried, fleet

fantasias of need sway in
a loopy, bobbing dance without strings.

It’s this sense of movement the organism uses
to believe in its own existence, the palpable presence

of an intangible parade, uncertain
planetary marches, a supernumerary of stars.

In its mania for artifice the crowd has sewn the sky
with these shiny extras. Embodied

adoration, they snap the organism shut
before tickling it open again

with reedy gestures. Breathe.
The crowd’s louche body

clings and parts in place, an ovation
rigid and adrift, alive. It is the sea

that sweeps the sea.
Broom tight with inner bickering.

A mortal scour. Meaning,
how the crowd hates the crowd.

Outwardly. It admits you or me
as an enormous lidless eye admits glittering

beams. Endless watching, washing us in.
The crowd’s object, its point,

is always vanishing into its own mass. It is a sea
with no concern for us, even as it scores.