Indolent days in exile from Alabama in a city
              My city was a school
in the north I was bussed into: I don't hate it I don't hate it
              cinderblocks of kismet and John Wayne, I do
I don't, where the streets around the sublet are cordoned off
              black like a white kid in detention
for excavating graves of pre-war water and utopian electric
              erotic possibilities of wrongness like a guitar I plucked
threads from the millrace and the loom. When the hot-patch
              hot flash, all adrenaline and vibration, b-twang squeak, semi
truck backs up it makes the sound of an ambulance in France
              conscious of a language of hurt in sweet, predestined ways
and the air is perfumed with the lacquered black oil spilled
              and volition like a little philosopher of hell, I argued
at a great distance from Arabia and Pec, then mopped up and
              to myself said scat and blasphemous prayers
tamped in a form of a coffin. A fine film over the new
              The city was a filmstrip of another world inside this one
a planetary dust over the remains: an imitation pearl
              glaze over the beads of the glorified
plastic tiara, a winged copy of Spare Change in the gutter, an oven mitt
              an oven, an ocean passage, a lost nation
a child's pacifier, a lipstick casing, a pencil
              can you remember this? Akhmatova was asked
but who would write except the indolent? The air
              I remember the air in summer was an atom flow
rarefied with transmissions over the hidden speakers for Cubanismo
              karmic missiles and John Wayne marines and a boy
who will play a benefit for la causa. It's all in the rib cage
              It's all in the belly button, the coach says
A partially repatriated émigré with a crushed hat, I carry
              the outside boy of body, the inside boy of mind
in a wheelbarrow my heterosexual agenda: difference
              that schizophrenia I will carry to the flame and ash
(and shame and shamelessness). I return to the smoke of time
              In the city I fell in love
in Boston when I loved the numinous
              with Mistress Errato and the difference and the evening light
and now I await the dream trials
              for the crimes of 1965, your honor
where exhibit A is rhythm and blues, exhibit B a curl of hair
              I accuse myself of wanting a life
wrapped around a finger then unwound stretched from the
              willful and fatal, enraged and tender, the lifelong split
the Balkans through policy through rapture of the past
              of the self: in the American tar and becoming uneasy
to Tuscaloosa where I will delay the verdict with a song.