Mass Ave on a gray dusk
black wet street shine
asphalt sometimes sliced, sometimes spongey
dark flesh hurled to the earth
tied like a tourniquet
hurled to it and swallowed by the rain.
Your magic will be better than their magic
Spicer was thinking of you.
Early streetlights are the sun’s cribsheet.
the sun, anachronistic rests languorous
and even that’s too fast for the
infidel shadows digit fucking
Puritan windows just
as they do on Dutch Master’s minarets;
like the beautiful stranger who smiles at you,
you are hurled to it and it is nothing,
there is nothing here.
Windows across the street are hidden in
the windows above. Reflections that
are there are things that are not.
And the scurry of taxicabs buses and jaguars.
A woman walks by, first with one dog
then another, her mastiff bitch
dissolved to a cocker spaniel.
The rest is everything you might want.
All the mystery schools let out for recess
knowing nothing but the poem
that knows all;
it’s like a rent party in your eyes
and a monastery in your head
and now it is your turn to be in bed with a beautiful
American rage, a brunette with night sweats
and Carravaggio torso.
The day lifts its skirt and shows god a little leg,
god lifts its skirt and shows the day a little leg
and the day is beautiful for all the wrong reasons.
