Writing Exercise: Impersonal Universe Deck 2

Here is the constraint: take every third card from the deck, and use one word from every card to begin every other line of the poem.

Sometimes, he is silent. The way a

cobra eye-to-eye with one mongoose would

shut his damn mouth once he saw the army behind him.

Abolish the wits that lead to plans. the voice in his

snakey skull reminds him there are no

Gods in foxholes. Sometimes he is silent because

he picked up a penny on the ground under a 

tent at a carnival at the age of 7 and forgets if it was heads up. 

This would explain the lifetime of pain though none will accept

money as a valid excuse for him. He is silent because

on the first Wednesday of every month he sends a check 

children he did not mean to have. Because the sky, too,

is silent and grey and the stars are mostly

nameless. Because far enough into deep waters there is a 

moment where he must either learn to swim or form

goodbyes and say them to the no ones he's 

never spoken to and the men in bars whose

fists he has seen all too close. The worst part is the morning

when he lifts his head, bloodied from the

asphalt beneath him and realizes that he has always

been surrounded by mongeese.