around the block, next to the church,
aside the donut shop, ten feet from the laundry mat, there’s a liquor store,
false hopes, casual dreams, a feud with mirrors.
inside my head, sits an ideal, uptown,
light thunder, like jaguars, like white panthers.
the ideal is a creature, I gaze off
at times, so much a blessing, to create a smile; behavior says it never occurs,
pains say prayers on wings, likelihood discourages too many skylights.
would like to play the grownup piano,
the tussle, the wrestling, snatching, throwing a tussock of grass.
palming draperies,
sanding feelings, placing emotion on the table—missing in self, gone across
seas, found in disappointment.
the vanishing mind, the
building blocks, we know a few trained at Harvard. we know a couple from Yale,
laughing at moments, skilled at lecture, debate, fire.
many are alive, they fought
for freedom, the eons are running rapidly.
we have storytelling, those authors,
they give fable, allegory, allusion, deaths, passion, more freedoms—if to
outsoar others, dealing with gatekeepers, most of us—resent the smiles.
we know firemen, policemen, agents,
doctors, therapists, lectures, souls married, spirits divorced, some never
walked the gangway—never skipped rope, never had a child.
