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.