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where squadrons of worms creep up like

stripteasers

to be raped by blackbirds.

I go outside

and all up and down the street

the green armies shoot color

like an everlasting 4th of July,

and I too seem to swell inside,

a kind of unknown bursting, a

feeling, perhaps, that there isn’t any

enemy

anywhere.

and I reach down into the box

and there is

nothing—not even a

letter from the gas co. saying they will

shut it off

again.

not even a short note from my x-wife

bragging about her present

happiness.

my hand searches the mailbox in a kind of

disbelief long after the mind has

given up.

there’s not even a dead fly

down in there.

I am a fool, I think, I should have known it

works like this.

I go inside as all the flowers leap to

please me.

anything? the woman

asks.

nothing, I answer, what’s for

breakfast?

spring swan

swans die in the Spring too

and there it floated

dead on a Sunday

sideways

circling in the current

and I walked to the rotunda

and overhead

gods in chariots

dogs, women

circled,

and death

ran down my throat

like a mouse,

and I heard the people coming

with their picnic bags

and laughter,

and I felt guilty

for the swan

as if death

were a thing of shame

and like a fool

I walked away

and left them

my beautiful swan.

how is your heart?

during my worst times

on the park benches

in the jails

or living with

whores

I always had this certain

contentment—

I wouldn’t call it

happiness—

it was more of an inner

balance

that settled for

whatever was occurring

and it helped in the

factories

and when relationships

went wrong

with the

girls.

it helped

through the

wars and the

hangovers

the backalley fights

the

hospitals.

to awaken in a cheap room

in a strange city and

pull up the shade—

this was the craziest kind of

contentment

and to walk across the floor

to an old dresser with a

cracked mirror—

see myself, ugly,

grinning at it all.

what matters most is

how well you

walk through the

fire.

closing time

around 2 a.m.

in my small room

after turning off the poem

machine

for now

I continue to light

cigarettes and listen to

Beethoven on the

radio.

I listen with a

strange and lazy

aplomb,

knowing there’s still a poem

or two left to write, and

I feel damn

fine, at long

last,

as once again I

admire the verve and gamble

of this composer

now dead for over 100

years,

who’s younger and wilder

than you are

than I am.

the centuries are sprinkled

with rare magic

with divine creatures

who help us get past the common

and

extraordinary ills

that beset us.

I light the next to last

cigarette

remember all the 2 a.m.s

of my past,

put out of the bars

at closing time,

put out on the streets

(a ragged band of

solitary lonely

humans

we were)

each walking home

alone.

this is much better: living

where I now

live

and listening to

the reassurance

the kindness

of this unexpected

SYMPHONY OF TRIUMPH:

a new life.

racetrack parking lot at the end of the day

I watch them push the crippled and the infirm

in their wheelchairs

on to the electric lift

which carries them up into the long bus

where each chair is locked down

and each person has a window

of their own.

they are all white-skinned, like

pale paint on thin cardboard;

most of them are truly old;

there are a number of women, a few old

men, and 3 surprisingly young men

2 of whom wear neck braces that gleam

in the late afternoon sun

and all 3 with arms as thin as

rope and hands that resemble clenched

claws.

the caretaker seems very kind, very

understanding, he’s a

marvelous fat fellow with a

rectangular head and he wears a broad

smile which is not

false.

the old women are either extremely thin

or overweight.

most have humped backs and shoulders

and wispy

very straight

white hair.

they sit motionless, look straight

ahead as the electric lift raises them

on to the bus.

there is no conversation;

they appear calm and not embittered