BUSY BODY

So
very
disorienting, at first

to traipse-
out anonymous in the city's
oppressive din—

but gradually,
it gets easier
to perceive there—and even

to make a
little spare

sense of
this bizarre tingling
thing, this

slithering
feeling you get,

of—
hearing so
much! and yet, nobody

talking. Of—
deep and ancient
currents, of the arcane

filaments
of a somehow
sentient Monday

morning,
which just
sort of

brainlessly but
reverently stretch,

now threading
out and among
and between the bald

trees from
street to neighborhood
street—flexing to contain (and this

is the really
sticky part): not just you

and your story,
but the
whole situation—

in an invisible
and an in-
divisible slush

that's getting slowly meshed
and strained togther
in the same coagulating net.

And then—after that,
coalesces the milky
thought

that sometimes—loud silences
such as these

are described
as being "profound."

But a lot more
often than that, they're
mostly only sturdy,

that is—thick
with the
tart cool

of their own
simple dumbness.

EATING ALONE

You think—something funny 

must be going
on, and I no

longer want

to kiss you.

But seriously, I'm

just looking
for excuses—
to do fewer dishes.

TIME LAPSE

Actually—not so very
long after

row row rowing—
our boats all
the way

across the wide
titanic

sea—in search of some
freedom,

what we
found was—ourselves.

Marooned
in the same huge
line, in front
of some very sleek futuristic

stainless check-
out counter,

and all staring—duly hard
at the magazine
and news-
paper

racks while
we waited. And reading, to kill
the time—again

and again
and again, all of their tall
fantastic

headlines, in the vain
hope that,

on one
of those passes—something
about one

of them
would start
to look

different to us,
even if it
still

sounded exactly—
the same.

DEFERRED

Dear William 

Carlos Williams,
you were 

wrong—not about 

much, but about early 

spring 

and all

that reddish 

purplish twiggy stuff—for 

sure-

ly,

there's no 

such stark dignity—

there is only 

someone 

like me

arriving here, 

probably a little too early, and 

yet,

so 

so so 

so so so very 

lonely late—to see

these old

strands of icicle Christmas 

lights, still clinging 

pathetically 

to so many wrought- 

iron neighborhood 

fences, long 

since turned- 

off and unplugged, forgotten,

and just left 

here, dripping wet

with slow 

thaw and suspended—as if found

guilty and hung,

for the sheer shameful 

spectacle of the 

scene—as the March sun 

approaches,

and the tipsy 

birds—begin hollering.

A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING

Huge and oblong, city
blocks built of fog and filthy

cold vapor—stretch- 

out before your body's 

tottering gait,

confounding the repeated 

attempts 

its stubborn feet keep 

making, to get 

its hands in 

possession of pen 

and paper,

or to stick

its dumb face 

in front of a screen somewhere.

But when at

last, its legs succeed 

in the latter 

endeavor, some terrible 

passion—gathering, so much

like the blurry 

weather, behind its wet 

eyes—can sense 

the keys 

of a frail home 

computer 

craving to shrink 

away and recede, under-

neath 

each obscure and dangling 

finger, the nearer and 

nearer it comes—

to putting 

pressure upon

those little black 

squares which might

be most representative—

of what the 

truth 

of its  

own, personal

experience out there—really was.

THE STEAM COMING UP OFF THE TOP OF YOUR COFFEE CUP

It was probably
the sky

the made the mountains stick,

and it was
probably the mountains

that made some clouds gather,

and it was
probably some clouds that
called in that rain

fall,
and it was probably
that rainfall

that made a little sun seem

like a good
thing

to step outside under
after,

just spitting
and smoking
and thinking

up things—
and whatever.

NOT ANOTHER CLOUDS POEM—

I'm not
a weatherman—
you're not

supposed to 

believe me—

I just 

really
want you

to imagine—what it 

might mean
when I

tell you—tomorrow
looks

sunnier—

than today.