you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire.
new, sexy diagnoses have been added to the lexicon on your behalf
(“charlie don’ t surf,” has also been added to the lexicon on your behalf).
in this home that is not our home, we have mutually exiled each
other. i walk down your street in the rain, and i do not call you. i
walk in the opposite direction of where i know to find you. that we
do not speak is louder than bombs.
I miss the moshpit pushed to the side of the bed.
The hard and fast rules, the business,
Walking across town the baby’ s hand in mine
Gave me anxiety Rosado barely mellowed.
Who doesn’ t love to hear about anxiety.
You wouldn’ t be too wrong to wake from dreaming
Into an amusement park sluice of Rioja
Eau de post-Auden thanks a lot Timex hubbub.
Those feelings are in their way good luck.
I don’ t even need a communion wafer
To feel the need to broadcast imprecations
Fade like a docent as the hedge fund falls.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’ s roar; —
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!
I love all sights of earth and skies,
From flowers that glow to stars that shine;
The comet and the penny show,
All curious things, above, below,
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes:
I claim the Christian Pagan’ s line,
Humani nihil, — even so, —
And is not human life divine?
5pm on the nose. They open their mouths
And it rolls out: high, shrill and metallic.
First the boy, then his sister. Occasionally,
They both let loose at once, and I think
Of putting on my shoes to go up and see
Whether it is merely an experiment
Their parents have been conducting
Upon the good crystal, which must surely
Lie shattered to dust on the floor.
I always thought reality
was something you became
when you grew up.
In the square stands Fata Morgana
looking tired, shouting
Morning paper — morning paper.
Plurality is all. I walk among the restaurants,
the theatres, the grocery stores; I ride the cars
and hear of Mrs. Bedford’ s teeth and Albuquerque,
strikes unsettled, someone’ s simply marvelous date,
news of the German Jews, the baseball scores,
storetalk and whoretalk, talk of wars. I turn
the pages of a thousand books to read
the names of Buddha, Malthus, Walker Evans, Stendhal, André Gide,
Mail-day, and over the world in a thousand drag-nets
The bundles of letters are dumped on the docks and beaches,
And all that is dear to the personal conscious reaches
Around us again like filings around iron magnets,
And war stands aside for an hour and looks at our faces
Of total absorption that seem to have lost their places.
As a sloop with a sweep of immaculate wing on her delicate spine
And a keel as steel as a root that holds in the sea as she leans,
Leaning and laughing, my warm-hearted beauty, you ride, you ride,
You tack on the curves with parabola speed and a kiss of goodbye,
Like a thoroughbred sloop, my new high-spirited spirit, my kiss.
