#16

there is a bus that runs
through the heart of this
city at midnight
it is filled with no one
but a few stragglers
me included and the man
who drives all day
and into the night past
the same buildings the same
signs who hears the same
voices and the same complaints
and smells the same gin
on the breath of the same
clothes worn for a week

there is the desolation
I was looking for tucked
under the blue vinyl seat
next to a piece of gum
I place it up to the window
a sign for the cars
the ones going somewhere
showing them its okay
they dont have to worry
for their exhaust
is another mans air
especially a poets

Afternoon on the Clock

I am trying to imagine the person
on the other end of the phone,
I can only see this end pacing
back and forth in front of the desk,
“You don’t really live that far away
if you live close to Centrex”.
pause pause shuffle pause pause
“What if someone yoinks it?”*
*The word yoink is not in the dictionary,
it is unscrabbleable. pause pause
“You know what movie I really want to see?”

This is one of those talk-
without-purpose conversations
that are supposed to occur in the middle
of the night at home but now,
with the advent of cell phones,
his love jelly oozes out
into public hallways and streets,
through the vibrating airways
and spreads across the white lobby desk
from which I am unable to move
for another three hours.

Song For A Snowy Night

I declare! a snow emergency,
too many snow angels are staring
into my apartment.
Someone must plow them

streets before it gets worse,
I can’t! move –
it’s as if some doctor
of the earth found this city

broken, slipped on a cast.