delusions in madrid.

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stone prison walls
barricade the last sun of February
from entering my window.
it’s not a metaphor,
merely a suggestion
that I should scale
its charred silver walls
and be shot down
like a captive on the run.
or I could jump.
the fall would surely break my legs —
I’d say a 20% survival rate.
but I’ve never been
very good at statistics,
that is for people
whose minds are fixed on reality.
and staring out the open window
I’m not sure what’s real and what’s not.
I prayed again this morning,
but no one was listening.
& now I hobble
along the cobbled streets of Madrid
all along Gran Via
with tear-stained eyes hiding behind sunglasses,
the same way the sun hid itself from me.
and all the tourists
and other Americans
and students studying abroad
clear the path for a squalid man in a wheelchair
with no arms
scooting across Plaza del Carmen
with the legs of a track star,
the speed of a ram.
and this confines me
to my unreality
& it’s the only thing that brings me through.