He is blue sidewalk gum lately; sole-pressed

waffle and, charged like a great dangling breast

she looks down on him. He pines beholden 

to her scorn, who from her window golden

not one glance (down). Why should the scale's slant vex?

Far less chalkboard wrapping wall of theorem

than it's simplest arithmetic: can'ts

distilled of cans, reduction toward serum

blue as pine-lush mountainside far distant.

Lamplight backlit, fickle and insistent

proteins watch now sorry serenader's

into-night shuffle, lute dragging. His ex

in thrall to microscopic horse-traders

couldn't care less that she's lost her last chance.

Morning’s spent remembering nights before

when passion was in the surprise getting,

not the steady having of, and letting,

and success was somewhere in the surprise

finding beauty still beauty come sunrise...

Infrequent then as it’s vivid now, more

often in, alone, than out there scoring.

Could New York be so lonely and boring?

You’d be surprised; it eats me where I shit,

that fearful tickle, like I’m late for class,

lost, in long, empty halls with no hall-pass,

walking faster now, now jogging a bit,

   still. Memories don’t, always; either gone

   by day, or neon even now, years on.

We lepers stew in our pants. We cannot 

stand. They cannot stand to hear our plaints. We

sway. We sob on island colony... 

Wanting to, but doing not, so different

from. Wanting to touch, brushing the touching,

tender reeds pretending, faces blushing;

if sky were red so would the sea be. Beet

red cheeks, red meat, bled anomie concedes:

Sympathy is in the toilet, flushing. 

Touching, impossible; impossibly

deep needs crutching up the scarp to sight

the tiny schooner teased. Escape tonight,

the setting sun is anything but red, 

on ocean breeze we’ll strew our rude disease.

I imagine robbing our grandfather’s 

grave even as his eulogy drones. I

pry gold incisors from whiskered leather’s

staved bone-cave. Shelled, affections modify.

Cry, mourners, for the robber would rather

shed his floor-length tears than take a shower,

change attire. Looted, maw said sorry;

said black suits. Condolence lives to flower

arrange, jaw, and muddy shovels, quarry

lid of excised turf. Only an hour

before next funeral; hail me a hearse,

Grief, it seems you’re limited hereafter:

Our grandfather’s death-breath is getting worse

beneath, in the capped breadth of his laughter.