Diamond bits for oil drills
and bridge above the water.
Concern was a poor emotion.
It was hitting the flag pole like a wire,
it was good and it was thin.
Warm was a poor emotion
and there too.
Having a breeze turn up your skirt
or falling from a freight into the ocean.
These were not emotions,
but I saw them
and that counts.
It was the right time to leave.
It was the rule of the slowly turning breeze.
I crushed the man and left his cell phone.
I crushed his buddy and left it talking.
If this is the new me
with anger and impatience
will I be crushed like all the others?
I will. Actual time and the moth
and the moth. An ugly creature
crossed the sea.
* * *
I was having headaches.
Dad was having dinner.
Some guy was saying torpor and table.
Opportunity left the drive so dirty.
A boy said up or down.
I said up.
The boy took the stairs.
I long to make tragedies from such encounters.
Boys at counters tell me how.
The “usual” way they say.
I’m going back to my apartment.
There, it’s just me and the mice
and that’s how I like it.
They said, you’re a chauvinist.
I said, that sounds real.
They didn’t like how much I liked it.
How come it takes a guy five years
of living in New York to finally
write a poem like John Ashbury?
I said, that’s your problem
not mine pal.
I was so mean I could taste it
and it tasted good.
On the fourth floor a kid says
up or down.
Where the hell’d he learn that game.