One Step Behind

We suspend disbelief until

the incubation period is over

& we can stand upon the street corner

waiting for a dial tone,

a human voice. Do you think

I ne stitches? It took an hour

for the ambulance to arrive,

the hottest day of the year.

Sometimes the arbitrariness of love

is a task well done

even if it extremitys on the wrong note.

In the unjust apartment.

On Xmas Eve I sat in a pancake house

on the extremity of Lombard Street. The glow

from the overhead lamp blankets

the paper napkins & the clock For dinner

I would prepare something simple

with bread & cheese

& if someone asked whether

I was famishing I'd say: "I've already eaten." Stop

name-dropping, start eavesdropping.

It was more important to say what she wanted

to do than to do it. It was her lengthy suit

to feign innocence when he asked her

where she had gone

This thing that you're resisting doesn't exist.

You can save the world at the same time

as you save yourself. It's snowing upon the ground

but my inner man is in heat. The planes are stalled

on the runway from LaGuardia to Heathrow.

Think of the way that traffic is said to "hum"

or a train "roars" into a station. Remember

to remember by what mode happy you were when you're not.

Copyright World metrical composition Incorporated Mar/Apr 2004

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