as he left his groundfloor flat, refusing to speak to the inhabitant of Apt. 24

who’d put his boyfriend in Bellevue, calling police, while the artistic Buddhist composer

on sixth floor lay spaced out feet swollen with water, dying slowly of AIDS over a year—

The Chinese teacher cleaned & cooked in Apt. 23 for the homosexual poet who pined for his gymnast

thighs & buttocks— Downstairs th’ old hippie flower girl fell drunk over the banister, smashed her jaw—

her son despite moderate fame cheated of rocknroll money, twenty thousand people in stadiums

cheering his tattooed skinhead murderous Hare Krishna vegetarian drum lyrics—

Mary born in the building rested on her cane, heavy-legged with heart failure on the second landing, no more able

to vacation in Caracas & Dublin— The Russian landlady’s husband from concentration camp disappeared again—nobody mentioned he’d died—

tenants took over her building for hot water, she couldn’t add rent & pay taxes, wore a long coat hot days

alone & thin on the street carrying groceries to her crooked apartment silent—

One poet highschool teacher fell dead mysterious heart dysrhythmia, konked over

in his mother’s Brooklyn apartment, his first baby girl a year old, wife stoical a few days—

their growling noisy little dog had to go, the baby cried—

Meanwhile the upstairs apartment meth head shot cocaine & yowled up and down

East 12th Street, kicked out of Christine’s Eatery till police cornered him, ’top a hot iron steamhole

near Stuyvesant Town Avenue A telephone booth calling his deaf mother—sirens speed the way to Bellevue—

past whispering grass crack salesman jittering in circles on East 10th Street’s

southwest corner where art yuppies come out of the overpriced Japanese Sushi Bar—& they poured salt into potato soup heart failure vats at KK’s Polish restaurant

—Garbage piled up, nonbiodegradable plastic bags emptied by diabetic sidewalk homeless

looking for returnable bottles recycled dolls radios half-eaten hamburgers—thrown-away Danish—

On 13th Street the notary public sat in his dingy storefront, driver’s lessons & tax returns prepared on old metal desks—

Sunnysides crisped in butter, fries & sugary donuts passed over the luncheonette counter next door—

The Hispanic lady yelled at the rude African-American behind the Post Office window

“I waited all week my welfare check you sent me notice I was here yesterday

I want to see the supervisor bitch dont insult me refusing to look in—”

Closed eyes of Puerto Rican wino lips cracked skin red stretched out

on the pavement, naphtha backdoor open for the Korean family dry cleaners at the 14th Street corner—

Con Ed workmen drilled all year to bust electric pipes 6 feet deep in brown dirt

so cars bottlenecked wait minutes to pass the M14 bus stopped mid-road, heavy dressed senior citizens step down in red rubble

with Reduced Fare Program cards got from grey city Aging Department offices downtown up the second flight by elevators don’t work—

News comes on the radio, they bomb Baghdad and the Garden of Eden again?

A million starve in Sudan, mountains of eats stacked on docks, local gangs & U.N.’s trembling bureaucrat officers sweat near the equator arguing over

wheat piles shoved by bulldozers—Swedish doctors ran out of medicine— The Pakistan taxi driver

says Salman Rushdie must die, insulting the Prophet in fictions—

“No that wasn’t my opinion, just a character talking like in a poem no judgment”—

“Not till the sun rejects you do I,” so give you a quarter by the Catholic church 14th St. you stand half drunk

waving a plastic glass, flush-faced, live with your mother a wounded look on your lips, eyes squinting,

receding lower jaw sometimes you dry out in Bellevue, most days cadging dollars for sweet wine

by the corner where Plump Blindman shifts from foot to foot showing his white cane, rattling coins in a white paper cup some weeks

where girding the subway entrance construction sawhorses painted orange

guard steps underground— And across the street the NYCE bank machine cubicle door sign reads

Not in Operation as taxis bump on potholes asphalt mounded at the crossroad when red lights change green

& I’m on my way uptown to get a CAT scan liver biopsy, visit the cardiologist,

account for high blood pressure, kidneystones, diabetes, misty eyes & dysesthesia—

feeling lack in feet soles, inside ankles, small of back, phallus head, anus—

Old age sickness death again come round in the wink of an eye—

High school youth the inside skin of my thighs was silken smooth tho

nobody touched me there back then—

Across town the velvet poet takes Darvon N, Valium nightly, sleeps all

day kicking methadone

between brick walls sixth floor in a room cluttered with collages & gold

dot paper scraps covered

with words: “The whole point seems to be the idea of giving away the

giver.”

August 19, 1992

Everyday

The Lama sat

     in bed

with bamboo

backscratcher

his false teeth

in a big

glass of water

on the sunny

windowsill.

August 1992

Fun House Antique Store

I’d been motoring through States &

stopped at a country antique store, an

old-fashioned house, in excellent condition—

Flower’d wallpaper, polished banisters

lampshades dusted, candelabra burnished

flaming quiet by the cloak closet

under the stairs, pitcher of water & white

washbowls beside the french doors

embroidered doilies & artificial flowers

ivory & light brown on mahogany

side tables, a brass bowl for cards,

kitchen with polished stove cold ready

at Summer’s end to light up with split

wood & kindling in buckets beside

the empty fireplace, tongs & screen

in neat order. The second floor as

perfectly appointed as the foyer

(set with hat & cane rack & mirror)

stairway rugs & oaken doors, down beds

a glass-front bookcase, brown shiny bureaus,

drawers crammed with old ties & bloomers,

celluloid collars, some long-sleeved underwear, silk

& paisley shirts & shawls—and the stairs

to the third-floor attic rose five steep steps

into a blank wall nicely wallpapered with roses.

     What a delicate touch, trompe l’oeil

artistry, what charming care & magical consciousness