God Looked Up – Some of My Best Poems

1. THE TENDERLOIN, MY NEIGHBORHOOD

Out front of Dair’s Speed Wash
at the corner of Hyde and Ellis
this afternoon an angry man
in an effort to make his feelings clear
saw fit to ram another man’s head
through the plastic window
of a newspaper machine.
Across the street, oblivious,
a small Vietnamese child
hugged the traffic-signal pole
and rubbed herself up and down.
Another typical day until
the President of the United States,
swaddled in his motorcade
of armored limousines
and motorcycle cops, rode by.
I keep a faithful vigil from
my second story window on
the happenings below, my fingers
perched on the keys, my colander
brimming with seedless grapes:
forced to feed myself like some
sort of minor, exiled, deity.
His thighs athwart the hydrant,
the groggy, mid-day hooker
drained the last of her Pepsi
and stood to pose for the limos,
bending low to expose his phony breasts
while raising the back of her skirt.
Pronouns are a problem in
the Tenderloin, my neighborhood.
The trade gets by on illusion
since mouth and anus wear no gender.
The President cruised by today
on his way out of town. He’d been
campaigning for a candidate, and I
was trying to get some work done
here amid the usual trouble.
I flipped a grape out the window
which glanced off the helmet
of a motorcycle cop
then bounced into the gutter,
unnoticed.

2. ARS PHILOSOPHIA

The negative, transparent moon pauses in the afternoon sky,
not like a fisheye in formaldehyde, not like a grubby rubber lens.
It really doesn’t even pause, but sits still at an unknown distance,
not still as an hour-hand, not still as an unformed intention to refrain;
and the distance isn’t quite unknown, for somewhere there are instruments
that can make up our minds about just how far away it sits from us.
But the instruments can never be made to be perfectly accurate,
and even if they could be they wouldn’t really make up our minds,
since we must first believe they can; because it has always been our trust
in instruments of inquiry that has allowed us to make up our minds.
But it’s not so much the making up of our minds that comes from our beliefs,
but the re-making up of our minds in our confidence in new methods.
So the negative, transparent moon I say is steady in the afternoon sky
is neither negative, nor transparent, nor even the moon for that matter,
but is only an image I have attempted to represent with language
the way a poet would if s/he wanted to fool the reader into imagining
that the poet possessed a unique enough vision of the natural world
to validate his/her own self-alleged vision into the so-called emotional world,
which ultimately amounts to hogwash, or bad psychological reasoning;
because the only secure wisdom comes from accepting Love’s frailty–
from a good look into someone’s eyes, not from a careful picturing of the skies.

3. OHIO TURNPIKE

for Alessandra

I’m becoming attached to the caution-
yellow splat the size of the sun
I hope was a wasp or a hornet
at the center of my windshield.
I’m writing this poem at seventy
miles per hour with a toxic marker
on the lid of my styrofoam icechest.
I’m towing a load of the latest
go-carts in assorted colors,
some with defective seatbelts.
I’m towing this load to you, my love,
I’m coursing down a vein, an embolus
to stun your fibrillating heart,
I’m rasping to the static of Ohio.
The roadside crows take off as I pass
in a rush, with possum in their beaks,
and return in my rearview mirror.
I say a prayer for the soul of the German
shepherd dead on the yellow stripe.
I swerve to avoid the dreaded adult
black tiretread in my lane,
but my eyes are always on you.
I part of flock of little birds
gently in two with my truck,
and there you are in the distance,
in a tight, red swimming suit,
on a lifeguard stand, twirling your whistle,
while I thrash with my stumps in the surf.

4. INVENTORY

Since you’re asking, no: I do not often feel
as if there were a tight band around my head,
nor do evil spirits possess me at times. But,
I admit, I do not always tell the truth. It is true
that my table manners are not quite as good
at home as when I am out with company and,
to my recollection, I have never vomited
or coughed up blood. But yes, I do like dramatics.
The sight of blood neither frightens me
nor makes me sick, but I have never indulged
in any unusual sex practices. Indeed, I have never
been in trouble because of my sex behavior;
but, if you ask me, a large number of people
are guilty of bad sexual conduct. However, I am not
what you would call a special agent of God. I do not
think there is something wrong with my sex organs.
I must confess: at times I feel like smashing things;
but no one, to my knowledge, controls my mind.
On the contrary: my judgement has never been better
and I know who is responsible for my troubles.
Truly, I do not know if I believe in God (I struggle)
or in a life hereafter, but I very much doubt
a minister or priest can cure disease by praying
and putting his hand on your head. You ask
whether I think everything is turning out just like
the prophets of the Bible said it would. Most of the time
I have no idea what those guys were talking about so,
unless you can explain, I’ll leave that one blank.

5. HARUSPEX

Fresh intestines drape
Traffic signals and flagpoles,
Clog sewers and mess up
Satellite transmissions:
They are everywhere.
Nothing has gone wrong.
The less we say the better.
John John scooped up ten
Pounds with a bucket.
It was all carefully planned.
No one had to go to war.
My wife returned home
With five full grocery bags.
I didn’t ask questions.
Most birds stopped flying.
My colleagues understood.
My head ached eleven days
So I got out of my Toyota
And refused to get a girl.
The crowd went wild.
I got scared and looked up.
There was someone tall
In a brand new bathing suit,
The tag hanging from his teeth.
I took a drag and spit spit.
Then the ground dropped away.
Hallelujah. I said hallelujah.

6. ARS POETICA

Let us beat up people
wearing glasses,
pluck out their lenses
and arrange them
in a paper-towel tube
so that we can observe
high heaven in the way
of the first astronomers.
Let us farm the dead
and gobble maggots,
blindfolded, with our hands
tied behind our backs,
and position our assholes
on the points of steeples
and spin around like toys.
Let us forget to wipe
the smirks from our faces.

7. EXORCISM

I knelt at an altar
wrapped in cassock and surplice.
I was eleven.
I had flipped a coin and won
the right to shake the bells.
My knees began to hurt.
I thought the worst words,
Fuck God, Fuck God. . .
I tried to stop thinking them
but the harder I tried
the more I panicked
and the louder they rang.
The Eucharist was lifted.
I shook the bells as
Fuck God. . .
rang in my head.
I looked up, there
was the Lord, alone,
on his way out.
I asked no forgiveness.
That son of a virgin bled on me.

8. FOR THE GREATER GOOD

As the blundering turtle
in mortal peril
I call on Mr. Wizard
to reverse the vortex
and spin me safely home.
O what’s a precious thing like
you in a dump doing this?
I’m all broken up like
the stale bread of life
for the greater good.
As it is—The World—
who needs hallucinations?
Drill me a decent cave
where I can contemplate
my flawless upbringing,
the excellent reception
of excellent cartoons.
For the moment
all my rage is contained
in the last drop of bourbon
in the bottle I hold
inverted above my mouth.
Help Mr. Wizard!
I look like a circus-seal
gaping for a mackerel.
This is not a test, but
the final wake-up call.
Someone let me out
or give me words to love
and die so I can claim them
as my own–good words–
that I might live and live.

9. THE LOST MINOTAUR

Shaggy-maned and thin-shanked,
the geriatric Minotaur,
lost in the shopping mall,
angrily flexes his eyelids.
Fuming at spools of thread
scattered about the general store,
he gnashes his gums. No sparks.
I have turned off the lights,
strapped on my six-guns of mercy
and stalk the wretched creep.
I do not want to kill him,
only to get on his nerves
and drive him to the house
of the moon on the ocean floor
where his grandad, Poseidon, lies
anesthetized on a gurney.
If I can get close enough
to whisper in his ear
I will say: The Earthshaker’s dying;
let all the virgins rejoice.
I am poised. The crippled chaos-
demon has entered the main arena
and stares at me, laughing.
Let’s get the hell out of here.

10. THE TITLE OF THIS POEM

This poem will crawl off the page
and tickle the slit throat of poetry.
This poem will put on a mouse-suit
and look like the woman I wanted so desperately.
This poem will say, “And let there be light”
but nothing will happen.
This poem will rest when it’s tired
so as not to wear itself out.
This poem will shave the heads of all.
This poem is no laughing matter
since the Chileans that have themselves crucified
every Good Friday
are no laughing matter.
This poem is the child that speaks the sacred words
as it exits its mother’s womb:
“I just came out from in there.”
This poem cannot save your soul;
it’s already been condemned.
This poem will ask you the question:
“How about lunch next Tuesday?”
This poem carries weapons and surgical instruments.
This poem will end when I want it to.
The Ethiopian priestess of this poem
lives immortally in a box.
This poem is not at all concerned
with the suffering of the unfortunate.
This poem has agreed to chop my vegetables
and fry them just the way I like them.
This poem gets paid four dollars and thirty-five cents an hour
and does not complain.
Never before has this poem been so gosh darn pesky.
This poem will give you a piece of its banana
if you ask it politely.
Three guys tried to jump this poem in an alley
and got their asses kicked.
This poem spies on the neighbor-girl
with dishonorable intentions.
I will never get over this poem.
This poem doesn’t believe in anything
because this poem has destroyed all the differences
by simply being itself.
There is nothing wrong with this poem.
The father of this poem is a deadbeat.
This poem has seen the bald mons of its grandmother,
This poem shook hands with heads of state
with loaded pistols up their asses
and was entirely sympathetic.
This poem has major psychological problems
according to qualified experts
who love their seltzer water.
This poem once said, “I admire your cummerbund”
and was ridiculed mercilessly.
This poem needs a hair transplant and three or four expensive suits
if it expects to get anywhere in life.
This poem will die in the aisle of a passenger jet
with a stewardess pounding on its chest
and another one savagely kissing its mouth.
This poem will say, “One more miracle like that
and we won’t need a place to crash.”

11. CENSUS: 1990

No one could blame them for calling a neighborhood meeting
when the family of Guamaninas moved in on the block.
There is nothing wrong with Guamanians, they said,
but our children might choke on their emery boards
left so hazerdously lying on their over-watered lawn,
and what about the late-night breadfruit shipments?
Are the trucks not scarring the brand new ashpalt?
And what does this Mr. Guamanian do for a living;
has anyone even bothered to find out what he does?
It went on like this for more than an hour, everyone
wondering what they should do about the Guamaninas,
no one offering so much as a single decent suggestion
until the streelights came on and the Michelob Light
had effectively impaired their collective judgement
and inspired in their breasts enough maniacal courage
so that they all looked up at once and said: Let’s get ’em!
The official facts with regard to the ensuing imbroglio
are a public record in the relevent county court docket.
Don’t trust the local paper. It’s slanted. It omitted
one salient detail: the emery board belonged to one
female teenager, who had disgarded it while driving by.

12. WAR OF LOVE

The running-back on bended knee
in the end-zone blessed himself
so quickly and expertly God
looked up from peeling his orange.
All the animals changed their names.
It was clear to me
the string around my pinkie
had betrayed my trust. I summoned
the men who get sent right over
to sample my latest concoction
and now the place is a mess.
I think I can’t take much more.
Yesterday it was the bum
outside the convenience store;
today, a little girl on crutches.
Everyone wants to siphon off my homilies.
Look, I shimmied up this warhead
to take suck,
not to hear your grouchy dibs
on the dribble at the corners of my mouth.
I’m determined to compose an oath
I’m not ashamed to take,
to sculpt such a vulva in the trunk of a tree
the rulers of the world will stand in line
to swirl their tongues in its cleft.
Quiet! I found the clue in a spot of blood
in a wad of toilet paper. Read my lips.
I’m waiting for the perfect moment.
Quiet: don’t say something stupid.

13. PRIVATE RESERVE

My first name is Lance.
I have stumbled upon
a bundle of cash
and I have named it Johnson.
I iron each bill
to make it more presentable.
The twenty from Kansas City
is Charlie Johnson;
two fives from San Francisco
are twins: Molly and Milly.
The list goes on
all the way to Zachary: New York:
my only thousand.
The burger I had for lunch
was Harold the Second, son
of Harold and Anita Johnson:
two singles, deceased.
The ounce of marijuana
I purchased this morning
is sweet Melissa Johnson:
both hundreds, from Boston,
series 1941.
It never stops.
Each cough is the offspring
of Melissa, and I name each one:
Fred, Lisa, Mona, Nick. . .
all Johnsons, all expired.

14. THE INSANE DEMAND

The insane demand
pats on the head,
tunafish sandwiches
wrapped in dollar bills.
The insane pretend
they’re not insane
with intelligent questions
on government policy.
Luckily, I am too busy
to pay them attention
and sit outside carving
holes in my hands.
One of the insane
(my very favorite)
I have chained
to my power mower.
He pushes it on the lawn
saying brrmmm brrmmm
while I sit on the porch
carving the holes.
The rest in the basement
I have chained up.
They are the ones
with all the demands.
They make a lot of noise
but I don’t notice it.
They are all the words
I do not know.

15. THE DENIZEN

I’m embarrassed to admit it:
the men who truck the trash
away on Tuesday mornings
have become my favorite friends.
Harry and Dil–they know my name.
We laugh at the head
of my ex-lover. Harry dropped it,
or it broke through the bag;
we don’t like to argue. Anyhow,
the head lay on the pavement.
Dil grabbed it by the hair
and held it high, his other grip
on an invisible hilt at his hip,
and said he was Hercules.
Harry agreed. We argued until
I got a book from the house
and proved Dil was Perseus.
They’d never heard of Perseus,
the stupid-fucks. I said
I might wind up in trouble
if someone saw Dil
waving the head around.
Harry and Dil agreed and said
they had better be getting
back to their route anyway,
and Dil pitched the head and trash
into the truck’s jaws.
The air was warm,
so I waited on the porch to have
a few words with the paperboy.
He’d flung the Monday edition
into my petunia bed and I desired
to shake my fist at him until
his tender lips quivered.
We talked for hours. He helped me
clip coupons and eat my
left-over spaghetti. We discussed
the bent petunias
like reasonable human beings
until the beer went to his head
and made him wise.

16. GOOD DAY

With a splutter of independence
Funman zips home from hiding
a hatchet in a shrub
and gets down on the carpet.
He flicks his tongue
at the sparkles in the ceiling
determined not to flinch
when a bug crawls his face
or the cleaning lady
rams him with the vacuum.
I was bored, he will say
to the councilor, I spent
Tuesday the 12th at the zoo
ridiculing ostriches
and dealing canasta
to a gorilla named Duffy.
Betterman steps in.
Dog crosses a puddle
to show off a miracle.
Betterman steps in:
Councilor, Funman is no butcher.
Funman knows no Duffy.

17. LETTERS

On his birthday, Funman
working the main branch
post office in a jubilation
addled from false predictions.
He is not sorry; he laughs
slyly at the little collisions
between the customers,
helps the confused, and whisks
a chain with its pen at the desk.
He beats it softly,
whipping up words to trickle
from the pen and hums
a little tune next to the zip-code book.
The employees try to ignore him
all day as his envelopes
pile up on the desk because
the police would be powerless.
It’s his birthday. He knows
there is no law against him
writing letters in public.

18. SEVERANCE DEBT

There’s a monk in my heart
with a fly on his lip–
a mendicant, giving me shit
about my screwing up at love.
He showed up unannounced–
a tumor claiming to be benign–
and staked out a ventricle
in perfect pumping order.
He crouches there,
in a carnival of blood and dust,
and rubs his shiny shins
saying: Be small, be small. . .
I set up war-games in my kitchen
with varnished roaches
(black versus reddish-brown)
and attack as God with insecticide.
No one wins. Some of the bugs
scatter and I cry:
Be strong, be brave. . .
and set them up again.
The monk in my heart is a jerk.
The fly on his lip I caught
in my throat and swallowed
while pedaling my bike.
Jesus Christ: I beg him:
Give my ugly heart a break.
Jesus God: he answers:
Why don’t you ditch your mind?

19. AN HOUR AWAY FROM SENTENCING

The weight of the world on my shoulders,
foul weather afoot to boot, I buckle
the chinstrap on my partyhat
and brace myself with a shot of the finest whatever.
Wind swirls aimlessly in my ears.
Sometimes I just haul off and smile
like a frog on a famous lillypad
fluent in seventeen neighborhoods.
The truth, your honor, since that’s what you prefer. . .
tears rolled down my face
when she showed me what she’d done to me,
but you came here to hear my crime.
I practice my defense on a jury of trees
trimmed with the light of this dawn,
bare feet pressed to the cold mountain earth
pausing anon to listen for music.
The lungs grow weak from huffing.
I’ll guide you this once from my forest,
whatever it is you call yourself—
just offer your sisters these numbers.
I’ve got my plans and they have me.
Steam floats over the graveyard
I mowed while I rode my trike
for freedom and a safe place to play.
I’ll take back what you thought I said.
No fire will flare from these nostrils
as long as you keep something coming,
as long as your light bounces off of my eyes.
Two turns in sneakers around the block,
and you won’t even recognize.
You’ll write down all you wished you’d said
and boast that you once knew me well.
It all comes together in the end.
The heap sinks as the bodies pile higher.
I didn’t start it. Someone did.
Someone threw the first punch first.

20. SKYWRITER

The child whose name I sign on the sky
above the city crouches near the tree
behind his house in the dirt and weeds
to stage The Crucifixion
right this time, with the lizard alive.
His failures decay around the trunk.
Charred ends of lizard and popcicle® stick,
offerings piled beneath the brown owl’s pine
attract only the child and the flies.
Collected works, they keep his dream alive.
He knows about dinnertime.
He reads the twitches, watches the eyelids
as he binds the lizard’s limbs to the sticks
with breadloaf twist-ties.
No one bribed the child to take control.
Restraining it not to death—he struggles.
I cannot see him, flying this high,
his name spewing out of my tailpipe
as he strains his attention on the life
he tortures to save and end properly
on the cross at the end of a string
tied to the lowest branch, swinging
barely inches above the ground
so that all anyone can see from a distance
is a string tied to a limb.

21. BUILDING THE NATIVITY

The strongest feminine woman in the parish blasted us from the choir loft with the loudest barrels of her pipe organ to scold us for making too much laughter while we built the life-size nativity scene on the altar as she practiced.

Monsignor came out, and we told him the sound of the hammers in church, right there on the alter underneath the giant crucifix, struck us as funny in the most horrible way, and that we couldn’t help but to break into laughter.

Actually we just stood there, looking down this way and that, as though searching for a nail someone dropped, struggling not to giggle.

Monsignor was a pretty good guy and grabbed me by the hair for a none too-affectionate yank.

We were the privileged, the able-bodied, intelligent and trustworthy, my buddies suddenly realized as Monsignor walked back into the sacristy, and they glared at me in procession as we returned to our work in silence while the strongest feminine woman in the parish played one just for me, down there shouldering all the blame in the smug satisfaction that she and Monsignor knew without asking which one of the chosen few had incited the riot.

22. REAL ESTATE

I cannot, mother, tell a lie:
I scotch-taped the M-80
to the stalk of your rose bush
and I ignited the fuse.
That was fifteen years ago.
Let you not refuse me
a plane ticket at Christmastime,
mother, for I have paid the fines
for all of my crimes,
absolved myself of the lizards
I crucified in your garden.
Forgive me myself. Dad was off,
his balls in someone else’s mitt.
I had to, mother, teach myself
the rituals of war and sacrifice.
And forgive him; be glad
he never struck you. Be glad
my life has not that meaning.

23. BOXING

I nailed a fist-size hunk of top sirloin
above my bed to the ceiling
to stand for the inside of my room
being the inside of me,
whom I am still beginning to assemble.
That was some time ago.
If you stood on a chair and bit it
the sinews would crackle
and I would visit upon you
my most pernicious execration.
I watch it decompose–
my precious hunk of Christ–
hugging the nail I punched through it,
and I rekindle my spirit
with belief in my good handiwork.
You have read the Bible:
you know there is no tampering
with the limits of self-
creation and destruction, no annulling
the marriage of mind and body,
no yanking out the nail.
Let the brave die gloriously;
that is all I ask.
Under the new rules,
when a mouthpiece is knocked away
the clock is stopped and the fight halted.
People in the crowd boo.

24. CELEBRATION

As soon as I heard The Shroud is a fraud
I grabbed my hair and dragged myself
to the toolshed for a shovel.
I was living in a house
in a town surrounded by thousands of trees
and I took the shovel for a walk in the woods
to discover what I might accomplish there.
There was nothing but millions of leaves
which sickened me,
for I had no way of knowing
which leaves belonged to which trees.
O, the joy I endured
at running across a cache of rubbish
tucked beneath a bush near the creek, and
O, with such sedulous care
did I examine each wrapper and can
for clues to its origin.
Nothing. I broke the shovel in half against a tree,
took hold of my upper teeth with one hand
and the back of my neck with the other,
and tried for an hour to rip off my head.
Lord, will you forgive me my trespass?
Can I pick and eat the scab on my elbow
without fear of your savage reprisal,
or do I take my meals alone?
Am I become the tongue in my mouth?

25. PRAYER TO NOVEMBER

Show yourself, Angel of November,
that I might speak to you, make you
official as the rotting pumpkin chunks
cluttering your gutters and sidewalks.
You have pushed the stars too close.
You are strange; you must explain to me
the hectoring language of your crows,
put simple words to the clacking of limbs.
You dropped an empty nest at my feet,
but I love now (you are rude);
I contemplate the dream of immortality.
Come close now; whistle me my desire.
Angel, how is it I know you?
My lover’s skin reeks not like burnt leaves,
the sky sparkles not like polished chert,
and the full moon refuses my toast.
Angel, you hurl down slabs of icy wind
to shatter windows when doors are slammed.
I do not know myself but I know this:
nothing is on the verge of taking my place.

26. TO BAJA CALIFORNIA

On Revolution Avenue
in Tijuana Mexico
there stands one striped burro
who drools on the shoes of her photographer
dressed all in red and yellow.
With a stare so hollow she
seems not to see or feel
even the fly that shits on her eyeball,
she twitches an ear–that’s all.
It’s time I built a shack upon my head
with beat-up billboards and orange crates,
so I will need a hammer and some nails
and Earth to stop rumbling
–Earth, stop rumbling–
so I can steady the nails.
The last thing I need is a thumb
the size and color of a plum.
So help me God
when I get the shack built
and blood is streaming from my temples
the poor can come and live in it for free
and I will dig my heels into Earth
and brace myself between two trees
and stand there and stand there
until I grow too weak and fall.

27. EDICT FROM THE POET EMPEROR

No one is allowed to leave the theater.
The guards will pass out bread and wine each morning
and whips will prevent your slumber.
Blankets will be provided
if the weather turns sour.
Pots for excretion are placed strategically
throughout the theater
and failure to use them will result
in a beating and loss of citizenship.
Quiet copulation is permitted
and the tent at the entrance will serve
for the delivery of any newborns.
All newborns will bear my given name
and receive and honorary rank
even if retarded or deformed.
The dying will raise their hands before they die.
If one of the dying is unconscious or too weak
to signal the guards
the spouse or eldest child will give the signal.
All who signal their own deaths
will promptly be dispatched and buried
with the honors due to veterans.
All who signal the deaths of their spouses or parents
will be executed immediately
if the dying party cans stand alone and implore my by name.
Needless to say, all who die without family
will have their flesh seared from their bones
and their skeletons strung together with copper wire
to ornament the prows of my warships.
When I’m finished, the living will return to their towns
and quote my verses in the streets
to celebrate my triumph over virtue.

28. THE POET

Too poor to dole forgiveness out
the poet counts his winnings at the table
and wonders what his life was like
in the fluffy world outside the room.
He is the essence of purity.
Children in his path turn baleful
and spit out the tips of their tongues,
escaping to the bushes.
Justice is the dream of victims–
a breadcrust in a teacup
pecked at by a six-inch bird
in the sights of the poet’s pellet-gun.
We mourn the dead with fearful love
in the name of a noun that stands for a verb
the poet will never discover
in his tentative struggle for virtue.
A peripatetic cruelty sustains him.
He singes his boutonniere with care,
slips in cushioned insoles,
and straps a trumpet to his head.
Now he is ready to roll.
Now he is ready to pave his own way.

29. I ACCUSE MYSELF

I accuse myself of squandering my youth
in booze and succulent vaginas, and gladly
I accuse myself of landing an excellent job
for the sake of money and succulent vaginas.
And I accuse myself of treating women
not as people but as places I can leave, and so
I accuse myself of flouting human decency.
Then I accuse myself of shameless hypocrisy,
for frequently I denounce moral turpitude
and define outloud what’s right and what’s wrong.
I accuse myself of the mysterious minor injuries
I discover on my limbs hungover mornings,
and then I accuse myself of self-loathing
and of promising the mirror I will change
my style of living, which destroys my youth
in measures too small to gauge each day.
Too, I accuse myself of showing up for work
and presenting myself as a responsible adult
and of doing my job efficiently and expertly
for the betterment of a tolerable company,
while I remain intolerable to myself and conceal
the fact of my despicable nature from people
well disposed to my gregarious affability.
I accuse myself of accusing others of mendacity
and outright fraud, when I know myself to envy
the flagrancy of power abused by the higher-ups.
At last I accuse myself of thinking I’m the greatest,
capable of having become a rock-and-roll star
or a famous actor, when today I would settle for sex
filmed by a practical stranger in a filmy room.

30. MONDAY AFTERNOON AT ERICA’S

Erica is not very funny—she’s hilarious
with her gleaming teeth and her cold glass of water.
She throws it on me while I shower. Such a card
should get an award. Such a woman owes me
an afternoon of sex in front of the television.
Three days of continuous rain was not enough
to clean the streets of Erica’s low income neighborhood,
and this afternoon, as the sun juts through
the scattered clouds and sets the windows humming,
I do believe I will enjoy myself at my leisure.
After the shower I’ll sit and write the poem
while Erica heats up a couple of bagels.
I’ll sit in my towel while my hair dries and remind myself
not to be so hard on this or that unlovable failure,
and I will thank Erica when she serves me my lunch.
Nothing is more important than loving Erica.
Too often one is liable to lose sight of her small perfections.
Erica herself is not exactly sure of what makes her good
but trusts that she is anyway, and is for sure.
Me? I’m filled with hunger and desire.