What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit-
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
     In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images,
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations!
     What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam-
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you,
Garcнa Lorca, what were you doing down by the
watermelons?

     I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old
grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator
and eyeing the grocery boys.
     I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed
the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my
Angel?
     I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of
cans following you, and followed in my imagination
by the store detective.
     We strode down the open corridors together in
our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every
frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
     Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors
close in an hour. Which way does your beard point
tonight?
     (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
     Will we walk all night through solitary streets?
The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses,
we'll both be lonely.
     Will we stroll dreaming ofthe lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent
cottage?
     Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-
teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit
poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank
and stood watching the boat disappear on the black
waters of Lethe?

                                   Berkeley 1955

A day recedes,
     I'll chase down one more night
A lamed and hobbling Spring
     tries to outrun the tide
of all the misspent months
and all this wasted time

          The northern breeze sings cold,
          it sighs through tattered topsails
          sea of questions waits.
          schools of unanswered voicemails

My footfalls share the sidewalks,
                                          steady,
sure­. Still young but glimpsing old and stumbling

Walking outside
soaked lungs need some new air
I'm nervous and shaking
fold the map, don a blank stare
my days wearing on
               fill 'em up with a fool's words
               I'm saltwashed, stuck and
               peeling paint off my memory
               for now.

A day's been seized--
          a metered length of life
Can't place a price on Fall
          and can't outrun the tide
of these layered seasons
as his time unwinds

          The eastern wind comes hard
          and shreds through mended mainsails
          river of answers dried
          so ask the waving cattails.

His footfalls know the sidewalks
                                        leaking
down sidestreets' asphalt tributaries

Walking around
A hitch in his slow gait
A ghost of our town
shuffles on with a fixed gaze,
his days playing out,
               As he strides down the sidewalks
               his life plays a film,
               flashing bright on glazed eyeballs

And I'm southbound,
4 p.m. driving Orange Street
completely drowned--
               --swore I woke up in Gimli,
                Manitoba January
                seared into my youthful memories
I'm freezerburnt
                Autumn heat, don't leave me
I'll hold your hair if you're feeling sickly,
then drive back home.
                Autumn heat, don't leave me now.

                ...Autumn heat, don't leave me now.

Down stucco sidestreets,
Where light is pewter
And afternoon mist
Brings lights on in shops
Above race-guides and rosaries,
A funeral passes.

The hearse is ahead,
But after there follows
A troop of streetwalkers
In wide flowered hats,
Leg-of-mutton sleeves,
And ankle-length dresses.

There is an air of great friendliness,
As if they were honouring
One they were fond of;
Some caper a few steps,
Skirts held skilfully
(Someone claps time),

And of great sadness also.
As they wend away
A voice is heard singing
Of Kitty, or Katy,
As if the name meant once
All love, all beauty.

In my search for the serene quietude of dawn
To warm with embers the cold rivers of my soul
I have forsaken your dark shores
Rising and gliding above the hills and mountains
In the swiftest speed I roared

But a giant realization had snatched me
From the mountainous caverns of solitude
Indeed as I have always known, it is
Inside the warmth of your animated splendor
With impassioned ears, I listened to
The sweet cacophonies of jeepneys roaring
In your busy streets, and the hawkers hawking
Along the sidewalks and sidestreets of life
Hustling under the red skies of your twilight

I am alive, and you are alive
Amidst the death that pervades the air
And the disquiet of the surrounding chaos
Like a dark ominous fog that rises into the stars  
Destroying the holiness of dreams

Life, life, life! I screamed into the depths of your bay
Hoping to dredge from the red waters, the long gone
Where tattered dreams where made anew
Woven from the silken threads of sleep
Birthed by the once glorious rising of the sun

We are alive, we want you alive
And with our heft, we will raise our fists
We will break the locked doors of heaven
To drag out the kings to hell
And sentence them to the nothingness

We will dance, like the galaxies
Hammering and pounding the ground
Shattering the yokes of cerebral slumber
To ignite the furnaces of life
And start anew a fire that would burn
To bring the light through the everlasting dark!

I wrote this in November and was not happy with it;
"
I heard passion on the streets of New York City
the sea foam of the sky hanging on the Persian shield watching over us
the gloaming brings retrospect
the healthy green pendant of the six train matches the bushes in the square
in Little Ukraine
it is dark
we bounce as we step
I know when I move I will
be on my own
she tells me she hears yelling. is it happy exclamation or anger
I don't know. I say. I don't know"

12/25/2016

On the sidestreets of Little Ukraine
men smoked cigarettes and said *pryvit
and KNL said it's because you look slavic

but i'm pennsylvania dutch! i laugh
shoofly pie, not sochniki
off the 33rd street stop

and it was getting to be dark out
the sky heliotrope and true blue
I heard a noise

did you hear that too? I say to her
It was angry or happy? she asks, more like states
I don't know, all i said.

*But it's passion.
It's passion.
On the streets of new york city. That would make a good poem, right?

The breaking apart of an ideal remains the breaking apart of something.

O, this carpet, this mattress.

I tore at the wall all night, I decree.

And I pictured fierce torrents jetting from the fissures I'd caused.

Within the whirl of half-dreams.

The evening shoved its nose into my flightpath, and coiled about the rungs of sleeplessness.

I won't fight, I will fight.

I shan't toss my next year away into the expectant wind of the world.

The measure of one's life contained,
Within an overstuffed shelf.

Too often,
I've succumbed.

Mind the pools, that sit on sidestreets in my neighbourhood, I graze past.

I run past.

Lone but with a legion of cheerers in my ears.

A haunted water.