Against the Wall

All that remains, the beasts having declined,
Is chum and chow, the wrinkles on one's feet
Smoothed by contraction, the lively little girls
Gone blonde from red, then white from blonde, at last
Telling lies of yore and splendiferous
Kindergarten snacks. It was a bad time.
We ate our ration cards. We had for sex
A kind of contempt. I saw a skeleton
Banging another up against the wall
And was not tempted. When our hetman sought
My vote for alderman, I told him, Once
I rode a horse across an undulate
And singing field, which he wrote down as Yes.

Before the Prologue

They rode on palfreys or on mules. He said,

It’s April. When it’s April …showers. None
Impelled, he let them fall asleep, to prompt
Them further, with a look at cherry trees
And battlements and rivers full of geese.
Remember March? he asked. It was so dry–
So how dry was it? asked a tubby priest,
Greatly indulged. Not quite the point. He thought
About the robin on a hawthorn branch,
Its breast as red as Christes blood, now dried
And efficacious only by a hymn.
He had no hymns, the diplomat, but stories
Flowed out by art arterial and blessed.

Good Cheer & Local Color

There’s been an incident at 5^th and 6^th

And 73^rd and 58^th and Elm.

I see dead people everywhere, except

On S. Lipan and Penny Lane and Stout.

I don’t know why. Rellenos on the wind,

The sound of magic flutes, the frail red duff,

Oranges and lemons: still the bones pile up

Just above Congress Park, on Ruby Hill,

And where the Carpet Warehouse has been closed.

Come home tonight. I found some bottles of

Whatever could be bottled up. Not these,

However emptied out the scuffed-up rooms,

Annoyed to be anonymous. Here come

The incidents of Christmas Past passant.