wake up. The alarm of my clock says 6:30
and we’re O. K. My dreams, so
visibly faint over your hands,
have skipped
out; banking on a future
they enlisted.
But look. See, fingers
Of barn animal’s light
have rushed
in, to adopt us
coming like a government pension?
O I still love you as I did at
10 o’clock last night.
If you open my door now, you’ll see my stairway circling up
like
a fertility dance. The 2 boys
of Raphael, the janitor, are
dreaming of
pennies there in the
glows that leap from the Earth mattress
of cellars up to the tip of the
5th floor. Let’s get out of bed soon.
While on the end of Mr. Antoni’s chain
a steel ball
waits to punch the sad faces of tenements,
isn’t my hugging you like a gentle breeze?
At this hour
as the pendulum,
swaying in the warmth of Stanley Tolkin’s Bar,
disavows the blueprint for a wall,
like China’s, to stay
a little the landslide of Wednesdays,
isn’t my hugging you like a hurricane?
Now don’t you think about what the crew is doing.
Look into the mirror
of my mind. See, the wrecker’s ball
the pendulum
are linked
like us almost perfectly. Listen
here, observe all things in the mirror
in pairs
like
— guess who? Looking at the alley cat,
are you?
who mimics
the ways we earn
fresh bread
on E. 14th St? See him hunting for scraps?
He gives a title
role
to carp fins
waiting in the wings of paper bags. I’ll
open up your pajama tops. Yet don’t
swear the hour is perfect
even though it’s morning. The minute,
plodding
like an old man,
to the hour
hand seems to be cutting
off the heads of circus horses,
and charming Dick Traceys, and the
head of a head of a Ming Dynasty
who I wished inhabited this
pure air
where I discovered
a beauty of empty
park benches in your whispers. Now
I’ll think about boiling us hot
cocoa, and about E. 14th St, I’ll tell you
things: the dust-
ing rags is the ghost of Arshile Gorky;
Julie
is whispering to Guy upstairs that his Wop darkness
makes him a perfect
juvenile type — they are
short and she’s so
blond !And 10th Street
street stones in St. Mark Square
are panting under Mr. Auden’s cane. The sidewalks
flow
between many walls of low
rent where poets
proliferate
like
grass,
and the Bridge is down the East River
bigger
than Hart Crane or Vladimir Mayokovski!
We are lucky.
As we make love, the beautiful girl of
10 o’clock lamplight stretched herself over the
rocks
of The Three Musicians of Picasso and my burlap wall.
It’s a symbol which means: Don’t
worry about my breathing
stopping; the Housing Projects
will become a troupe of straightmen
who only wish to introduce — Guess
who? O.K. your eyes insist I’ll tell you because your eyes
have the tragedy of abandonment like an orphan girl
or a castle
re-painted
white. I’ll tell you that while
ghostly citizens have
gathered their birthdays
like
phone numbers,
the Housing Projects shall become a troupe
of straightmen, without a real
mother
or a carnation.
They are only waiting to introduce us to the
CLOWNS
who always wink
and twist my wrist
on the days I break my vow
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