Making It Up As I Go Along 2
Sipping club soda
without his usual twist of lime,
watching the flatscreen TV
mounted on the wall
where four owners ago
dart-playing patrons
ate Buffalo wings
and drank imported beers,
the bartender I imagine
into the bar across the street
that I also choose to imagine
no one has walked in or out of
since I sat down at my desk
wants to close an hour early
so his new girlfriend won’t
have to ride the E train alone
when her shift at the diner
a few blocks down is done.
He sweeps the floor one last time,
brings in the drink-specials A-frame,
but just as he’s about to turn the TV off
and head for the new red Elantra
his girlfriend hasn’t seen yet,
he turns up the volume:
news from the city back home
his parents just moved to,
and I cannot help but smile:
the student whose essay
I’ve just tried twice to read
must have been at least
as distracted as I am now
when she typed the words
I wish I could have allowed
to wash over me like music,
because had it been music
the avant-garde movement of her thought
might actually have earned her an A.
I know no sane person
should be grading at this hour—
the crescent moon yellow-white
against the post midnight blue-black sky—
but I’m behind, as I always am,
and if I don’t finish this stack tonight,
it will double in height by Friday,
and I intend then
to be savoring a whiskey
at the bar in Terra Blues,
following whoever is on stage
into the space inside myself
only music can take me to,
like when my roommate was away sophomore year
and I lay hours each day
on the floor between our beds,
shades drawn, lights out,
blanket beneath me,
letting Keith Jarret’s Köln Concert
enter me like a lover’s touch, orchestrating
along grooves of pleasure
I didn’t know existed
the desire not
to keep any of it
to myself.
Since You Asked
1
Give what you know you can part with, not what they tell you will serve them.
Serving them makes you a fool; making them fools is your task.
2
Nothing will prove you’re not lying; nothing but lying will serve you.
Lift up the veil when they ask; dare them to touch what they see.
3
Laugh when they offer you money; giggle as if you are flattered.
Offer them loyalty’s ghost; run if they glimpse your deceit.
4
Death never waits till you’re finished, neither does love when it falters.
Endings release you from pain; pain hunts you down nonetheless.
The Coming Storm
To lure a poem, don’t debate the rain.
Drought gives you no choice; debate the rain.
I’m sipping tea at 3:15 AM.
I dreamed I woke to reinstate the rain.
The ribbon this day was unraveled hard.
I grabbed the end and tried to plait the rain.
I watched you come and then I watched you go.
In loss, you must interrogate the rain.
Forgive the wind its wanton loneliness,
its desperate need to implicate the rain.
Morning fog descends, a white-gray blanket.
Do not attempt to imitate the rain.
To love the one who will not love you back,
do all you can to complicate the rain.
Give your true name to all who ask for it.
Its syllables will validate the rain.
Mine is Richard. I offer it to you
without regret. Naked, I await the rain.
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