we are always asked
to understand the other person’s
viewpoint
no matter how
out—dated

they talk down through
the centuries to us,
and this we need more and more,
the statues and paintings
in midnight age

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine—
just a lightbulb

too much too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or

in the hospitals and jails
it’s the worst
in madhouses
it’s the worst
in penthouses

—he’s a dandy
—small moustache
—usually sucking on a cigar
he tends to lean into cars as he
transacts business

a girlfriend came in
built me a bed
scrubbed and waxed the kitchen flo
scrubbed the walls
vacuumed

“what?” they say, “you got a
computer?”
it’s like I have sold out to
the enemy.
I had no idea so many

he sat naked and drunk in a room o
night, running the blade of the kn
under his fingernails, smiling, th
of all the letters he had received
telling him that

I have lain in bed all day
but I have written one poem
and I am up now
looking out the window
and like a novelist might say