Les boîtes

We’re all trapped in boxes

most

of our own design

In the struggle to define
we lose our roundness.

The married
eke out a life
in matchboxes

the poor
in bureaucracy’s
myriad check boxes

the visitor
in a fish-eye lens
of suspicion.

There’s an absent lover, pocket pal or gaijin
trapped in any smartphone, snapping selfies
distorted, suffocating
battling with language
behind all that glass.

And after death,
the urns and coffins
still enbox —
or we fly to perfectly squared heavens
and cubist hells.

So maybe that’s why

in all of my nightmares

I’m fleeing.