Unkind Square
In Unkind Square
men posture and women snipe
The infinite infant wails and demands
what they demand of each other:
Why aren’t you me?
A woman smiles the troubled smile
of a woman who believes she must smile
A nervous man glares out
at the assembled jury of his strangers
We’re all living
We’re just all doing it a little differently
You don’t bitch at the pine tree
So don’t bitch at me
they fidget-plead with their elbows
shoulders and knees
The jury says good point,
except they
would have said it differently
All That Was Left
for Samantha
Oh inspiration
Oh woman with whom I share breath
you who rescues me daily
from the prison city I’ve piled
on the shores of such bloody thoughts
There’s a law at the altar and a law at the gate
a sign carved on the doorpost
and pet names spoken in the house
where children dream
that all names and laws might coincide
You find me near the true city
in view of its porticos archways and cupolas
whose bull-necked stonemasons never admit it
as they turn the mountains to lace
There you draw from me this approximation
of how the stars sprayed
across the ceiling of all that was left
when I tired of lying
Apex Predator
On a tranquil afternoon
the architect and pissbum shout themselves hoarse
telling off gangs of phantoms
Check the lines in your palms
like the lines in a stream bed
Check the crick in your neck
to make sure you’re not a metaphor
It’s inconclusive at best
Every minute of every hour overpowered
by minutes hours and kin too insidious to tick—
real apex predators, herdsmen and butchers
in whose thrall you are
Their primary business is reassurance
Expressions of money and archaic arguments
printed on the skin of pretty women the hats of young men
the power of Christ by which you compel you
and the nostalgic eroticism of a subway ad
the ownership assigned others over yourself
and the authority imagined in return
Forever late to the debate
the young duped and devoured as bad as the old
Lingering by the hat shop and hair salon
limbs wrapped in cellophane from a recent tattoo
placating warring masks in one more tithe
from a conscious species to a living oblivion
Befuddlement and apathy
stand as the most potent freedoms
before this mummifying beast
in whom the past is the guts of the present, the present
is the mouth of the past, and the future,
you know by now, is nothing but food
Evanescent as precedence
in the procession of rush hour, you jostle
for preeminence in that deity’s diet