2020

WORLD HAPPINESS DANCE / SISTER THE JOISTS

The daylight is looking forward to getting away
From this question mark customer.

In the split-level beer and spice place
The characteristic feeling changes
Every couple of feet, here curry here fenugreek,
Dried lemons... I have power,
I am a powerful man. Where I ask for licorice,
Three weeks later licorice appears. Root.

I sit inside as the daylight
Hangs out with people playing music in the park.
I play music too: I have Ornette yodeling through my cortex,
Must I be bereft of radiation?

A billion people in Canada,
All of them eating Canadian food.

*

I put on the cd of a friend,
I have no cd of my own,
What would I put on it, Betty Barclay
Singing I'm a Big Girl Now probably.

It is Christmas in January,
In February, I like this put on
Of the universe singing
In the waves, the waves are the singing,

The plaster is cracked at the ceiling
And the joints of the walls,
It is time to sister the joists,
To spackle and repaint

And box up all the artillery
Of the finders burrowing
Deeper into the mud than the groove.
I am lucky to get to like you.



(This poem sponsored in part by a grant from Samuel Amadon.)