American Cul-de-sac

Somebody names a street
or somebody lives on it.
What’s the use of having a street
if nobody lives on it?

Leave a thumbtack in the applesauce
or a turd in the buffet before you go
or a dead pigeon in the scullery
or an anthill in the flour bin
but always carry landscape; create scenery.

When moving on, it’s hard to know
how to offer up a prayer,
& whether it goes
or if it’s a smoky catbird that goes.

Somebody names a street
or somebody lives on it.
What’s the use of having a street
if nobody lives on it?

If your house is on a hill,
it’s because someone decided it would be;
if your body feels tense,
then it is.

You leaned for so long against your hall locker
that your grade school principal said
You holdin’ that wall up?

You wanted to talk to me
but could not find the time;
looked for the vanishing point, & saw none.

Thanks to you,
I have never walked into the same room twice.

Somebody names a street
or somebody lives on it.
What’s the use of having a street
if nobody lives on it?

Hula

The man who brought us the hula-hoop
has passed on.

Everything is a question of rotation.

We ignore distance when we are out of it—
selective absence when we sleep—

& while we sleep, the wind gathers above us like a hat.

We prefer incomplete knowledge to Death,
but we are always ready to write aloha.

We pray for sun every twelfth hour
& for the hula, every eleventh

& for the impossible spin of the room
& for the carpet of rain on the rain-slicked roof.

It’s Late

It’s late.

Let’s recline into the shellacked windings
of our lawn chairs,

& talk about what we have not talked about.

It’s late.

Let’s clothe our hands in boxing mitts
& school ourselves in the pugilistic arts.

Is that a bushel of dirt you’re eating?

Let’s talk mud & detritus:
Original Dirt.

It’s late.

Let’s move toward mobility
until we cannot help ourselves.