scouting the wetlands
a decent job you can’t ask for
if you wish
for a fish
and scarcely ring up Tompkins at the Task Force
with a bill
for him to fill
while you wash the linen dainty in the stream there
by the city
it’s a pity
you admire a lady who has bulky dream-hair
in her locks
you count the flocks
swimming all the way from Alps to sea air
handily
dandily
sacrificing wool to make a mask for us
on Ballona Creek
I drank it down in one gulp
says Kafka my inner being
after a night at the Yiddish Theater
it tasted of honey all the way down
to his toes
that exosphere of cross
communion where the mere
dithyrambs of an hundred harpers
per hectare
ring the chamber door
and out you move
as it were slidingly
into the thickets and copses
like low mesquite
and tundra pines
to the verge of where
the summer air
magnificently trips up after
plunging to the zenith
into the drink
and somewhere there
remains a skillet afar
for manufacturing dinner
at the drop of a hat
on the floor for small change
The Ambassador Hotel
in that time and that place we knew
what the whisperers were talking about
and said so (they would accost you right there
in the supermarket and point and say
such a one was no damn good watch out for that one)
we marked everything missed nothing hung our hats
on the chair by the bed we slept in (homecakes
in the morning apple juice and coffee)
we had breakfast in bed by turns
we didn't care by that time what we had for dinner
(beef brisket cole slaw muffins and port) so long as
the town we had lights in kept them running
though there was a last night lit for quite a time
still we knew
what there was
to know worth knowing
and then the spectacularly brass events farthinged
up our street and we spectacularly
ourselves ran up to meet them but
we were snowed under
we were like that quite some time and then
and then we returned
the sun returned
and we were like home
a visitor from another planet
a red torque
blossoms around her knees
she standing erect
on her platform shoes
guzzling greedily
the mansions of the great
