Why should you believe in magic,
pretend an interest in astrology
or the tarot? Truth is, you are
free, and what might happen to you
today, nobody knows. And your
personality may undergo a radical
transformation in the next half
hour. So it goes. You are consumed
by your faith in justice, your
hope for a better day, the rightness
of fate, the dreams, the lies
the taunts—Nobody gets what he
wants. A dark star passes through
you on your way home from
the grocery: never again are you
the same—an experience which is
impossible to forget, impossible
to share. The longing to be pure
is over. You are the stranger
who gets stranger by the hour.
Shadowboxing
Sometimes you almost get a punch in.
Then you may go for days without even seeing him,
or his presence may become a comfort
for a while.
He says: I saw you scrambling last night
on your knees and hands.
He says: How come you always want to be
something else, how come you never take your life
seriously?
And you say: Shut up! Isn’t it enough
I say I love you, I give you everything!
He moves across the room with his hand
on his chin, and says: How great you are!
Come here, let me touch you, you say.
He comes closer. Come close, you say.
He comes closer. Then. Whack! And
you start again, moving around and around
the room, the room which grows larger
and larger, darker and darker. The black moon.
Images of Little Compton, Rhode Island
Here the tendons in the swans’ wings stretch,
feel the tautness of their futuristic necks,
imagine their brains’ keyhole accuracy,
envy their infinitely precise desires.
A red-nosed Goodyear zeppelin emerges from the mist
like an ethereal albino whale on drugs.
One wanders around a credible hushed town.
Mosquito hammering through the air
with a horse’s power: there will be no cameramen.
We will swap bodies maybe
giving the old one a shove.
That’s an awful lot of work for you I said
and besides look at your hands,
there are small fires in the palms,
there is smoke squirting from every pore.
O when all is lost,
when we have thrown our shoes in the sea,
when our watches have crawled off into weeds,
our typewriters have finally spelled perhaps
accidentally the unthinkable word,
when the rocks loosen and the sea anemones
welcome us home with their gossamer arms
dropping like a ship from the stars,
what on earth shall we speak or think of,
and who do you think you are?
From the Hole
A horse-drawn rocket
climbs the wooden hill:
behind it two or three friends
are sharing their tobacco: their hats
are beautiful like small pieces of
coal on their heads
fostering goodwill.
I’m standing in this hole, see,
and I’m going to holler out:
“Good riddance to bad rubbish!”
and “I’m sorry if I was a menace!”
“Howdy doody, milkman travail!”
“So long buoys and grills.”
Like a harp
burning on an island
nobody knows about.
The Trap
Inside the old chair
I found another chair;
though smaller, I liked
sitting in it better.
Inside that chair
I found another chair;
though smaller, in
many ways I felt
good sitting in it.
Inside that chair
I found another chair;
it was smaller and
seemed to be made
just for me.
Inside that chair,
still another;
it was very small,
so small I could
hardly get out of it.
Inside that chair
I found yet another;
and in that, another,
and another, until
I was sitting in
a chair so small
it would be difficult
to say I was sitting
in a chair at all.
I could not rise
or fall, and no one
could catch me.
Twilight Sustenance Hiatus
The relentless confetti of dollars!
I’d prefer to kiss that silent chipmunk
on the roadside while a tiny ocean
of dandelion seeds arranges a gray
throne on his ear! I have no “final”
vows to take tonight, though your hair
might be floating down the Ohio.
Chameleons can march around a small room
if they want. I could sell gasoline
on the desert, though I would miss
the