Heading for JFK
I’ve to head off let it roll
the shuttles won’t run late
yet to eat dinner
& I have work to make
a bed for, cold iron pants,
in the cold entranceway standing
to open the door for residents;
empty
street on Newbury week-
ends have passed; now the streets
pass
real busy, & I can’t get around to
reading anymore—
the shame.
And the residents don’t know
my name either way,
I’ve got all their names on a list
unknowing mine. You heard
O’ Keefe’s in the MFA a few streets
down, &
pink purple black blond hair
is across the walls.
You cannot go with me to
pin your red hair on the petals.
art is really so lonely
At JFK
After they called it floating tumor
garbage, the ad says, Discover
Puerto Rico, like Cuba,
like finding Lowell
with purple skin & skinny wrists
bruised, the imaginary
painted him, colorfully walking
around sleeping
nurses, & islands of limbs collaged
by flailing tongues and shaky eyes—
You make the place how you’d like,
in the end.
One cannot expect to make
a life a life of words He says,
That’s all I’d like to manage.
But Mr. Lowell,
says the nurse Look where it’s
gotten you.
My Robert, pleasantly, is locked with
pens & flowers
in its own room, yours in yours, his,
well,
locked as we all get
the blind black and chair—
getting the Alewife train is full, & I
won’t
be able to sit with you again it feels
like
because it’s all so
lonely.
& if I go see O’ Keefe, I’ll go see de
Kooning, &
de Kooning is hard
if you never see outside to the world:
All I ever see is you. What I made
of.
Walking From the Station
But I understand why we leave
without my choice, often, then we
smell burning
oil & realize, I’d like to leave if only
once
to see what it is so worthwhile
that universes went through all the
trouble
of rupturing with red light
just to take away our choice.
Empty pack of cigarettes when I
wanted.
And what happens if I draw
a rectangle; then color an orange—
The paper starts smoking.
Yet the blue-lined fields worked,
your name doesn’t draw up
to the same; black marks
the silence blended
with the blankness looking back.
Stacy: it was just you & me
in that old Red Roof motel room
while the phone rang asking
When will you be home, honey?
I’ve made dinner & a beer here
on the counter with a book
is waiting for you; I do it every night.
But it didn’t matter it was, you & I
now rendered: empty sketched-
branches on my sheet, crumbled,
sifting
sand-letters, compressed trees
in my pocket, still smoking—
let the wife wait; when I get home
late
I’ll explain everything.
But don’t bother it, you said. What?
The air.
I’ll have been carted away
by a wagon made of samaras
you told me, alright then, well it’s
settled:
I’ll get on living with her.
But she’s gone the same trail
with you, lovely isn’t woman’s
solidarity?
Almost Home
It is cold & dark
there are two firetrucks
& an ambulance &
everything is red then black
the trees are red, the
bushes are red, the grass
is red, the bricks are red,
like Stacy,
handsome red men are wheeling out
my old school
bully-friend, though it’s been years
of alcohol abuse for his punishing
regret He is red, too,
He knows me though I’m red
in the cheeks He asks
You remember me right?
Yeah you remember me ?
I’m afraid, I start.
I look him up & he’s red like Stacy.
I’m afraid I can’t remember
the colors of rose
petals today I can’t bother
to join you in the back of the
ambulance
& disrupt your loneliness
or think of Stacy or of de Kooning or
of O’ Keefe or of Lowell
even the Lowell I made,
I can’t bother today
to try anymore.
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