Weekends in Tranquility Park--
With the downtown buildings, hallways of giants
clustered,
Exhaling the coolness echoed
From the rectangular mouths of doors
Opened and closed by cityers--
A coolness came over my thoughts
The way lack of wind contains
The hastening of Yosemite's flames.
There, diurnal and punctual, she crossed
That small area of grass, fountains, and cement
Which were generally buffeted more fully by sun and
adjacent
Sounds, moving the park more than Bush and Dukakis'
Presence. "WALK" was always lit when la chica
Approached the street, carrying her library books.
When would she, artificial and pneumatic,
Who like Houston's miniature stop-lights
While going to work, veer my movements
To slide off a plane ticket and be led
Through and from burning Amazons
And green-house climactic changes--
Through wasted ozone and my own depleted life--
The breath of her mouth my only nourishment.
Masking tape
From hurricane threats
Remains at the edges of windowpanes;
Palm trees, below, are hybrid to cement;
Thuc Nguyen's business report figures
Blend and bury themselves as distant sounds;
The staff meeting and this cigarette industry are
gone.
Slid off a plane ticket caught in life's winds
Restless No friends for real
All wanting something from me
The outside world has nothing
Except life-ending amusements of
Sex to escape void
The dead have some solidity of truth
About what happens after life
Even if they are not aware of it,
And the rest breathe in fables
Everything is surely unchanged in
Springfield, Mo., where I was raised,
But none of it is mine
Nothing is ours--humanity drifts along
And intersects briefly in alliances My friends
Are co-workers whom I must expire
My life with civilly
As we light cigarettes
And bitch of no new raises
When would she pull on my arm
Tugging me thoroughly into breaking glass
Of the 12th floor conference room
To fall, putting me out violently,
When I can no longer dream
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-