Monday, July 5, 2010
You want to write. You want to write.
Tonight a sharp breeze from the river
or elsewhere. The trains run later
than expected, column of low whistle parting
clouds, and this new place is on a flight path
so the lights lope in triads above
your kitchen window, blinking, bound
for coasts. Midnight, the usual sounds.
When he met you, he gathered you up
in hug. Where from the folds of his
impossible pants—someone would vote
him best dressed this week, a joke, you
never could see his shoes, cuffs like moon
boots, waist held up with string, head
shaven, alien—from where did he rise,
springing weed, born through the pleats
of cotton duck to greet you? Only later
the stories reach you. He can’t come back.
He drank so much one night, he stole
a dozen saucers from the kitchen, spilled
a pool within every rim,
left them under the beds of women.
When does your life stop being your life?
The trains, the air—nothing’s a distraction.
He must have balanced the plates on each
arm, walking through moonlessness,
white shirted and singing.
Thursday, July 1, 2010