Unfare

The poem was talking about stars
and now I am thinking about
jeepneys, the passenger
at the end of that tunnel
right behind the driver and
his wife.

Unspoken rule he will touch
the coins that came from
our pockets that came
from the vendors at
the market selling tomatoes
even when
no one's buying for
they've been too fragile
for this cold.

Coins wrapped by dirt
and dried skin black
as mire or the cushion I
put over my office chair
I think about the things
we give up to be good
or to think we are good.

I've been wearing these glasses
for three years and I'm
not sure when to replace them.
Migraine. She said she had
migraine that day but God
knows she just might need
a new pair of glasses.

I am trying to be kind
to my thoughts in response
to Ginsberg's "Meditation and Poetics"
but the world isn't as
kind to me as I have been
to myself.

I remember the passenger who
sits at the end of the jeepney's
tunnel, how he chooses
to sit there because if
not him
who?