rapunzel city 

if i had enough hair 
i would lower myself
into the mouth of a fresh broadcast.
call me the statistic to prove
we are still alive. once a man 
dressed as spiderman in time square
handed me a piece of paper that asked,
"would you like to die?"
it wasn't a threat or a question of concern. 
now i live in a land of towers.
each of them with hair spilling & spilling out.
a vessel is maybe meant 
to be overtaken. too much to fit.
discovering how far a strand 
of puppet string can go before
it becomes a man. i wanted 
to let every princess out. i wanted to help
them set fire to their mothers
but their mothers were princesses too
& so we have a problem of linkages.
let's not get haywire though. 
if you look at a burning girl
you can tell who lit her, right?
i count my fingers. i count my teeth.
i call another rapunzel & she is 
trying to get along better with 
her family. she thinks maybe
she can make it work & maybe 
things will get so better she will forget
what it was like to be in the tower 
at all. i nod along because
i've been here before. i know i can't
tell her anything so we just watch
the television. the television says,
"let's stop being genders already."
i say amen. when night falls 
we all go to our windows. i remember
when the sky fell in on itself.
everything was dark brown & buzzing.
we laughed in that summer dark.
the outlet no longer worked. all we had
were our mouths. the stars have been
a projection for millenea but i still
sometimes think when i see them
that maybe one or two are helicopter.