trying the poets’ existence
the dimension of beloved fools
carried away from wrong
carried away from reality

worshiping those same sins
with confused imaginations
like lovers again themselves
to be forgiven as the lot

Oh, listen —
and forget forever
we’ll wink at wonders
giggle near hopeful windows
carrying falling light and
in recovery, devouring the air

Oh, listen —
papers so lean at midnight
messages of delight without strokes
open and trying insatiably
soaring—with courageous flex—they break!
now behind us, burning water

filthy whiskey
smoking asphalt alleyways
roaring ******* windowsills
shuddering stoops

midnight money
shaking subway traffic
neon red hotels
battered archangel blues

starving madness
sweet ecstatic ***
naked eyes lounging
******* harlequin ******

blemished evenings
hopeless
humorless
concrete amnesia
blind hungry dreams

jukebox consciousness
bald drunken incantations
suicide waitresses
the holy pavement angel

tenement jazz
weeping
dreaming
scribbling *****
screaming delight

sirens
sunrise
disgorged rivers
tender moans
pure unshaven salvation

late summer Sunday tea
a cup of afternoon dream

ghostly sincerity, passion
and suspicions

angry love, fatally mislaid
somewhere in an isolated heart

only the purest wings survive
in irresistible fires