“I no longer privilege myself,” he says,
then makes his hand into a blade,
a chest-high single half a prayer
with my dollar he didn’t ask for
slotted between his thumb and forefinger
as if in the cockpit of a rocket
that suddenly thrusts above his head
and snaps back to his chest, a blade again
he playfully jabs at me and folds into his pocket,
from which it emerges as his empty hand—
this sequence performed with practiced quickness.
“Did you stab me?” I ask. “Am I dead?”
“I stabbed you alive,” he replies merrily,
his face lit up red as his Angels cap
with the halo at the apex of the A.
“Do you play for the Angels?” I once asked him.
“I play with the angels,” he answered angrily,
and flicked my dollar crumpled back at me.
“Don’t patronize me. I’m not crazy,” he said.
I stick to our script strictly now,
although there’s more I’d like to ask him.
I don’t know how to “no longer privilege myself,”
if that means waking to egoless consciousness
in which fear and greed become so painless and harmless
I could float circles above them
like the halo on the logo.
My dollar vanishes into his pocket
and his hand always comes up empty,
but only after his ritual gesture
up to something other and higher
then down to himself to stab me alive
enough to love my life more
desperately as it disappears.