swimming ducks

People in this town move slow and conscious (not cautious) like the smoke that curls unevenly from their lips.
They smile from the inside out (sometimes they never make it past the corners of their mouths) like the smoldering blush of a child running indoors.
The fog, the permanent overcast, may seem "dark and mysterious" to the passerby, while in it we hold all our spirits, bundled up tight and heavy like our last names and call logs.
We sit in our homes, murmuring in response to the television--
or sit hard-tailed on sidewalks, chilled only to the skin in, where our hip-hop/indie-rock souls rage fierce and unadulterated,
or sit gossiping/philosophizing/writing/laughing loudly in coffeeshops, wired and loopy.
But we're all wired and loopy, running thin on this strange hum,
this strange home-hum;
California's street sounds and sunbeams had muffled its dull roaring,
but it is back now,
steady, and mine.