Rust in my shirt

The north-wester plagiarises the mountain’s wistfulness.
Pure meanings coagulate in the dusk light,
flail like the gale against my shirt.
Long, tiresome conversations, repeated confessions,
reveal nothing, merely an unpleasantness on the breath.
Despots and narcissists fall from grace,
scandals accumulate, like nicotine on the end of the finger.
Recollections of a light breeze on skin; broken 
epiphanies, trip from branches, from wilted petals,
from smiles on unfamiliar faces on the street.
There are many things to be done,
everyday requires a task, washing of clothes,
making the bed, dusting bookshelves,
answering the door – a child wanting water,
a young mother needing money for baby’s milk,
or for addictive drugs. There’s no telling the difference.
Grief is interred in legislated silence.
The fissures are widening. I hang out washing
on a line fastened to the loquat tree.
Green finches, camouflaged by lush leaves,
serenade the splintered clouds.
Obese fruit flies raid the stamens of nascent buds.
My daily chores are abandoned.
Residues of soap powder stain my dark clothes.
In others, veins of rust run, a delta
stretching under the armpit of the fabric.
The city has dispensed with its graceless past.
There is though, no solace from the overbearing glare
of unnatural lights, and the adhering sweat of trade.