SELF-CRITICISM AS AN ACT OF LOVE
The loveseat, my familiar, had me half-numb in my
making.
I made the sign at the rim of the clearing
outside on the fire escape.
I would toss Marlboros out
in the dream of discipline. Milk in a bottle heating
in the sunlight.
I prayed, likely infected
by the warm climate
in the walk-up and the home inside it
where I read the book I would. And the pines keeping roots
nocturnal.
I am rising with my spectacles, light-headed and presexual.
My pallid face made me think of the fabric
on my chest.
I made pronouncing my fear
beyond words, mad to be in my flesh for one last
minute—
one thing I made by being there, waiting to find my home
by the curve
in the highway and the bridge,
day and night in Manhattan, the borough in the wind.
• • •
DINNER SPECIAL
Unable to begin, under the incandescent
ongoingness of this—
late capitalism would give the bitter
fruit its malignancy.
Maybe I would interest
you with what I understand—
must, must I, but find Credits for it,
or Exchange—
deep things, new ideas, and unwed.
I buy bread that we may eat three
pennyworths of barley loaves and 2 small fishes
sizzling in grass and corn.
When I awoke with my sharp teeth before the dawn,
the perennials kept to disarray
on the plate my hunger drove me to.
I perceived they would take me as King
to the sea of Galilee,
which is the sea of the Great Multitude.
So I departed into the mount myself alone.