1.
One can escape.
The problem is everything will melt
down to the clothes and
one’s sex drive. Giving up
is too sexy to bear.
It rains too hard for me to think
twice about inviting you in
to my confidence.
2.
Two can at least talk
about the failures and shortcomings
if they are lucky enough
to have found a good listener.
No company’s got
what I jones for.
3.
Melt the problems— Three four five—down
and string them together
like jewelry. I’m lured
by the notes they strike when
they clink together.
You and I resemble
telephone poles. Thick black cables
surround our necks.
Hands need
busy work.
Hands think like well-educated
capitalists. Hands take
advantage.
6.
Six picnickers fold
their legs under their skirts as they lean
towards the spread on the checkered blanket
beside the orange leaves.
After I leave the New York City hotel
for the streets the first thing I see
on the piled-up newspapers in the garbage can
is a stereo split in two
wires exposed like guts.
A boy on the park bench, no visible
caretaker, folds the scraps
of paper he pulls from his coat pocket
into swans until
he runs out. A sheet
blows by.
He chases.
A horn on his forehead
the muscular god
perched on the gate to the city zoo
mumbles in whatever language
those who pass by don’t speak.
Locked in storage at night
a typewriter frantically fills its roll
with ink. A reporter
when he feeds his paper
around it each morning
doesn’t notice what’s dried.
Unlucky enough to get caught
in the one big wave after hundreds
of small ones the starfish is thrown
too far up the beach to get back.
7.
At seven the sun is warm and pleasant. By noon
it cooks. When I start to look
I see only what I’m looking for.
8.
I’m eighty-eight and I can’t use my legs anymore.
I’m blind so I dictate my lines. This
is all I’m left with.
A young man I’ve hired pushes me
around the park
and buys me drugs. He’s careful
not to pity me.
I was born with an allergy
to eggs that subsided and now
I can’t get enough.
What was my life worth?
The first time I tasted avocado.
I’m entranced by the smell
of bathroom sanitizers.
The smell stays with me when I leave.
Romantic I realize now.
A joke is just a joke until
one meets the comic and views
all his problems
like hundreds of dandruff flakes
in his black hair.
9.
No.
Always counting.
Always keeping track.
Inventory of the piled-up laundry.
Laundry that smells enough like me
to fool the cats during a long
absence.
Laundry list of lovers.
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