1647

What separates this time from the one before
Is an illusion of depth, of an undulation
In time anyone who has made a break feels
As push to a stop, and another, and so

The morning
Leaves home

1646

Ma, the real
Door is white

1645

BYE BYE PRIDE (C'EST LA VERITE)

The big wrinkle understood
Just this -- spring comes
To take over the world,
A Cuba we can't believe away

Its idiot program is pleasure all over

The first to admit defeat
Is covered under an adult language
Like two cakes, and the music
Coming from Klipsch speakers

Oh to have experience
And still be excited
To discover how small the windows
Look from the highway,

It would be impossible
To account for the sunlight
Coming from the room

If it's being hurt you want
You've found the right garage,
Is that the center of all melody
Or is your guitar just happy

I'm surrounded too
Singing "Let me be the one"
To the alternating ions
Chuckling at the harmony

I don't know about you but
It's frizzling me

1644

It is so difficult
to live with feelings

especially if no one
shows you how to have them

which is why the movies
all have guns in them

1643

THE ENIGMA OF KLEPTOMANIA

Let's list everything we do to feel alive:
Eat, play, run, flirt, bathe, drink coffee,
Get on the phone, look at the paper,
Go shopping, sing in the choir, take in
A movie, jog the leg under the desk chair,
Evaluate ourselves, silently judge the world,
Assume that everyone is also passing judgment,
Pass gas, make a pass, pass on the double
Yellow, score crack, go to the range,
Elect not to board the single prop,
Sabotage the bungee, subvert the wishes
Of those dearest, scan the search results
For relevant entries, challenge the good talker
To return to the bar that invariably ejects him,
Whistle, floss, bullshit around, fondle
The lapel of the blouse on the mannequin,
Read a poem, read every poem written this year,
Cry, cook, clean, file, run for office,
Teach a class, sit on a board, turn it up,
Turn you over, mistake a kind phrase
For a curt one, persist in pretending
To somehow carry on a famous suicide's legacy,
Upload, exclaim, admire, analyze, reject,
Flee, rush in, start a conversation,
Tuck a child in, edit an anthology,
Break up, oh where was I, drifted
Into some abstract coffee distraction
So unlike complete immersion and yet
From the outside how much alike they look,
The facial muscles, so that an observer
Must check in on the rest of the corpus
To see whether this is the highest motion
Or stillness. Oh anyway. And yet.

1642

One of these: an art critic,
A doctor, vice president of an insurance company,
A veterinarian, filmmaker, thief, chronically
Unemployable, amateur vintner,
Bookstore manager,
Sole proprietor.

I remind myself, whenever a "concept"
Occurs to me, of all the possibilities
I have evaded, in addition to the obvious
University payroll.

The game ends hours after sunset
And I am still free.

1641

You should break up with me every day,
That way I could look square
At this idea that you are never here,

See it afresh until
I can tell you blindfolded
How to flip it on its back.

I am writing
In one little room or another.
I don't know whether you're writing too.

1640

The essay comes in on the tides.
It's broken and pieces of it drift along the shore.
Until it's paraphrasable, don't call it an idea.
Call it marjoram, or margarine, or Marjorie,
Murmur some essentialist jargon in its ear.

It's messy, the command center.
They're insisting the check is for me
But I didn't put in for anything. I am huddled
In the corner, breathing shallow,
Waiting for the airplanes to go back wherever.

1639

THERE IS NO SCHOOL

And so a Venice emerges
As if time really were a body of water

As if bodies weren't really
Possessed by unchanging and beautiful demons

And in that city
I'm this guy

Who is kept from rushing away from himself
Only by the impassably gorgeous causeways

Which require everyone to adapt
Without any guide or custom

1638

BRACKISH LOCALES MAKE TRAVEL STERLING

In the house all my bells go off.
There are footsteps upstairs,
And when I shave a second hand
Follows my up and down motion.
The perfect stillness
Of objects spinning fast.

I walk into "town." I bring my manners
To the ice cream cabinet.

The car works. There is a barrier
Between me and the happiness I hear
Coming from the tree by the garage,
Forced into the air by a small bird.

1637

TREMBLING ALL THE TIME

Lately I've been trembling all the time.
I am like one who covets a rock tumbler

From the pages of some forlorn catalogue
While cradling all the lists of why

It won't work, simply to take some blame.
I am filled with excitement at that name.

When I think of it I start to shine.
Armor must have been incredibly dear,

Just think of the gratitude of its wearer.
He trembles imperceptibly inside.

Gymnastics are not a possibility,
And moving at great speeds requires

Another great expense, with its own
Thankfulness for metal. I want to say

A little prayer to all the computers.
I believe perhaps too much in bathing

To make a good battle reenactment buff.
I wish there was a straight road

To the heart of time, an empty place
Mottled with pulses of tree-light.

1636

MOSTLY READ THE LUNA MOTH

The savor of mango is unlike
Toothsome papay. My son takes
My hand and brings me
Into the classroom; Fluffy
Is absent and unremarked-upon

And in his place, two butterflies
Use tentatively in a sentence.
One, he explains, is a boy and
The other one lays the eggs,
I counted the dots, is a girl.

Why do boys not feed babies?
He reaches to pull his shirt open
And I ask him, did you ever see
A baby eat broccoli? a ham sandwich?
Someday I will tell him

Food is an unpleasant subject
For poems, but today I am concerned
With biology. I am a science kid,
He says on the platform. Where'd
He hear that. I know where the one

About men nursing came from.
Seeing myself tell that story
I feel like California's
Poisoned groundwater and remember
How much work it is to be real.

Someone told you men can give milk,
But men don't. What about moms and dads
Who don't have children? Those are
Called men and women. He says
Oh a lot. It's immediate

And it lags into the next moment
And is quiet, what the teachers call
A zone of proximal delay. Without
This apparent lull there is only
Brilliance and potential. With it

I get to keep a faith
In the unguessable next.

1635

Write a pop song called Back and Forth
or Lack of Faith,
                  order a pomegranate
Margarita at a plate glass place

Ass, ass, and depression machine

Go forth in the money
Go out and get muddy
         Who's looking at this caramel
   Macrame lemur cream
Who's hydrating by the canal

            Express trains
       From tunnels   give or take
   What  we  frustrate    I  hear  out

   The salt that pours
   From the standard offer
                   Buspass
                   President grin
                   Making up a list
         for the sake of the a-list
Look into.
Feeling of about to explode

   so what do I implode?

1634

GUINNESS RENT

Standing off the curb at 57th and 8th
With the posture of malaria alerts
Commanding me to be faithful
To the fire feeling that clenches me up
I'm forgetting the law of introductory portent
That going on too long before you get going
Leads you into the valley of the phone cards
In fact I'm forgetting a lot more than that
Because I'm remembering two or three things
Keep my son keep my job keep myself
From taking up residence in Depression Arms
The cabs go by the light hasn't changed
I cross and head straight for the deli
With a deal on Autoflow Guinness
A dollar-fifty a can then I make
For the papier mache pig
For three pints of red I'm not
Going over to Todd's until they're asleep
Busting in on sex or coin collecting
Is closer to shiny 1984 tv than
Ninety-one noir I just feel extra heel
Mo referendum please I play video trivia
I scope out the lesson plans I know something
After years of hearing no I don't
My son is asleep or so I hope
My clothes are at my feet enduffeled
I'll be out of here by eleven-fifty
Batter-dipped in smoke and alky conversation
Todd Tim Troy Christine I leave Guinness rent
I don't tie off or snort anything neat
My flask is my cell and I keep it clean

1633

Dad picks up his copy
Of Sylvia Plath
And the check
As he lights his Gitane

He is morbidly drawn
To the girl in the corner
He's aware
That she plays violin

"Outside of a dog
A book is my friend"
Inside of two months
They're living in sin

Dad compliments Plath
On her lovely talent
He thinks to himself
"Where's the gin"

She's beautiful pregnant
Though given to moods
I arrive
Let the games begin

1632

A CERTAIN MISS GREEN

Is certainly orthodox
In her manner with the broom.

She can cover an entire area
With a thought as lonely as the sun,

And while we measure curvature,
Pledge a mild allegiance

To her innermost
Seat of wisdom.

1631

YOUR FIRST INCISION

The animal is male.
The light coming in the window
Changes with the wind in the trees.
The classified information in the document
Is lost under magic marker.
The room takes us in
And pumps us back out.
You take me in.

The first and last month's rent is cashed.

1630

IN WHICH I TEMPORARILY STOP CREDITING YOU WITH MY THOUGHTS

The only prompt for the mockingbird is sunshine.
The crushed window barks at the slack key guitar,
Traveling in another land you find a kind of club
Where they don't want you out any particular time;
The music expands to fill all the pillbottles

The heart softens, the edge of the cliff
Turns out to be the top of a staircase
Into a valley that has decided to go for spring.

1629

THE ONLY DEFENSE AGAINST CALVINISM IS YOGA

The gravamen was neither toilet training
Nor even Alpine working hours, but the tyranny
Of comparison -- the tartan of the ledger

The only colors. Breathe. Do it again.
Other people -- can't live with them.
Through the class I am remembering no one

Will likely rifle my bags, we're different.

1628

LOUD PHONE BOOTH

What?

1627

FRIENDS STAY SMOKE FREE

Smoke friends stay free
Stay friends smoke free
Free friends stay smoke
Friends free smoke stay

Smoke free stay friends
Stay smoke free friends
Free stay friends smoke
Friends smoke free stay

Smoke stay friends free
Stay free smoke friends
Free smoke friends stay
Friends stay smoke free

1626

HAIRDRESSERS IN A HOLIDAY MAGAZINE

Get out of first gear
Or get out of the car.

The times we know shift us
Out of cat's eye glasses into
Quotation marks don't feel
Like they're tilting us
Toward the flippers,

They feel multiple and basically
The same. If I don't change
My socks everyday, though --

Would you score more baskets
If you aimed lower than the stars?

1625

RUSSIAN POEMS ABOUT AEROSMITH

The budget allocations for agriculture
Were far higher in 1958 than they had been
In 1952. I can see Boston on the horizon,
The housing blocks of Kursk dreaming
Of irony and ignorance and all the other
Shapely daughters of freedom the worried
Parents waged a long uncertain war against.