From our fifth-floor aerie, now cell, I 

spot my neighbors clad in fur who pay no 

maintenance fees nor assessment charges. 

For they are free, free in a tree! Free to 

lead such swinging lives, hedonists all, 

whether backyard aerialists or speed 

demons careening up and down the 

leafy highways and their branches.

Sometimes do they engage in quarrels, these 

Squirrels, or avid courtships where the squire never 

takes No for an answer. Birds and the bees leave them 

be, and bushy tails tell a tale I will not see behind the

Bushes, allowing them the privacy I no longer have,

their intimacy not to be Instagrammed, Facebook’d,

Twittered, and SnapChatted. But they raise no scandal,

Pay no heed to social distancing — au contraire — 

commit no mayhem, nor murder,

nor keep me from my night-appointed slumber

nor do they raise a fuss when through my open

window the raucous blast of horn and drum and 

piano shakes their leaves. For all I know, they too 

have their dens of cool chattering knowingly, over 

roasted acorns and beetle juice, of Bird, Miles, 

Coltrane, Ella, Louis, and Billie, sharers secret

I salute, in the symphony of this maddened city. 

Corona, you are Cain and 

            worse than Cain.

For you were never my 

            brother. 

I know you, Agent COVID-19, 

           master of stealth, nightmare 

assassin. You take on other

            people’s breath, to

Leap into mine, or from 

        hands unsuspecting, scale 

the battlements of my 

        Tell and through the

Windows of my soul, turn 

         this keep, make grief 

my castle! I block and

          parry, mask and simple

Soap, my foil. Foiled! Though 

          you will into the breach 

once more, though you may 

           Even make me weep

I refuse to be your keeper 

         or your host. 

I will neither be your 

         Abel nor enabler.

Get lost, you gutless son of a bitch! 

Today a horse, tomorrow Omaha.

The day winces, and my left shoulder twitches. 

My ambition is great, and I am not calm until

I turn my head and behold you.

For you have answered the sun with such

Promptness, such delicacy, that even hooves 

Flashing by smile, a whole row of animals

Dazzling with their bright teeth.

They could have torn us to shreds.

This is my break, my edge, as an ocean makes 

Its way bearing the untidy flotilla of my days. 

The seagulls mock me, they who canter on the 

Sand, a mock cavalry deep in declivity. 

Rise up O young

Life, reveal with each shadow the glow,

Render plain the starry pain, let water

Shut my eyes, as I walk into the westering waves, 

Into the sun, earth hungry, my soul dry, 

And you alert as a sand crab on the beach.

Do not grieve over those

you might have loved but didn’t,

or those you loved but soon left

or those who loved but left you bereft: 

After the grieving, what is left?

Do not say,

this life is too familiar,

do not measure

every step. What treasure 

in yet another measure?

In the everyday there is 

treasure, in the daily 

orbit of hours you will find an 

extraordinary feast.

Between the living room and the

bedroom, a secret garden 

reveals its roses, and when the 

laundry machine starts spinning, 

a god might suddenly start singing.

On the window ledge as you 

Look up from your coffee, 

Gabriel and Michael disguised 

as doves coo

ly eye you as only

archangels can.

The you that exits 

In the morning and the 

you that returns at night are

never the same. 

You can never step into the same self twice.

The weather remembers me kindly,

Remembers the footfall, smell, and

Aura of a man who once lived

Here, and puts out a call for a breeze,

And some cooling clouds to protect

Me from heat’s scolding. 

The landscape bears me no rancor on 

My absence and too brief return. 

What was a dull trek is now a treat.

The sky, subdued,

Is in a conciliatory mood.

Sentinels on the beach, palm trees

Eye me warily but 

Let me pass. The South China Sea,

On the other hand, is delighted,

And gambols at my feet, beckoning.

I plunge into it, two long-ago

friends lost in a tight embrace.

Despair demands theater for such a

person as I, someone who

compiles an archive of notes, who scrawls

as he crawls from bar to bar, setting

it lower and lower, 

as the drinking gets better & longer & later.

There I’ve said it, have drunk

nearly all my innocence and jewelry!

Yet even at the bottom of 

my cups, I refuse suicide, whose 

sole beneficiary would be me, nor 

would I be around to enjoy it,

And so …

Barkeep, another whiskey and beer!

In the king’s mind, nostalgia’s storyline 

escalates to a spectacular with butcher’s knives, 

and expeditions alter the Native and the Arctic.

In the king’s mind, the aged forbear the 

telling, the epic length of identity.

Give us this day our daily bread

before the poison of intelligence

melts the polar caps of our

imagination, and all hell

colludes to stretch over us 

a silk web of nightmares.

In the king’s mind, such is

the topography of empire:

Capital eating climate,

Revolutions eating children.

In the king’s mind roses of applause

for women alluring in their repression 

and men brave as soldier boys. 

We are as lonely as magicians in private. 

To the tick of consciousness, a wonder —

quiet, the swoosh, the shrill, the squeal of 

daffodils.

As for doubles, there are

Earth and pebbles, woods and

bits of stars that wandered here

lonely, snubbed by clouds. 

And here is something

broken, something beautiful

to turn heads.

Calyx of stamen, ochre of

leaf. Meaning goes by, we 

let it go, and 

wander down to the 

Underworld, and knowing the Dog, 

hop on the ferry and skip the

queue, never losing sight of

the galaxy, the green fields, the

Van Gogh Yellow 

that we may return to,

yet the figures of us loitering in the

graveyard: do we recognize

ourselves, fading brushstrokes?

What might the hand and heart do?

Happening is everything, is 

everything happening? Time,

high on itself, shrugs off 

all betrayals, stays loyal. 

Say, dream your dreams, fill

them with milestones of love, 

with blue weather, and move forward 

lying down, staying in place. Say,

Dream your end, as you would

Dream your beginning

Where O where are those two? Am I supposed to wait here forever, at the Corner of Stop  and
Go? This isn’t the first time, confusing up with down, East with West, a bad habit of Vlad and
Estragon. Who do they think they are — the emperor’s courtiers? 

No one knew them, no one saw them. Except the Boy. They had asked him to tell me, to wait at
the corner of Stop and Go. And here I am, on the corner of Stop and Go. I can’t Stop, I can’t Go,
yet I must go on.

O the ignominy! all they are good for is waiting and useless chatter. Please, Reader, should you
see them, let them know, I have arrived, that I am at the corner of Stop and Go, and that I Am
The One Who Waits.

I will no longer wait and have decided, with great sadness but bowing to the inevitable, that we
will in all likelihood never set eyes on one another, not even as shadowy figures on the far
horizon, to end this relationship with Didi and Gogo. Shall I move on? I shall. 

I have instructed the Boy to let Didi and Gogo know to no longer expect my august appearance.
I do confess: I did in the past appear to them and their circle regularly, unannounced, but always
welcomed with great fanfare, the doffing of those funny hats, the scraping and the bowing, the
grand speeches, the toasts. We had some memorable times together! Times that they can replay
over and over again in their heads, to infuse their lives with hope and aspiration. Especially
Gogo, who has pretensions of being a poet. 

Ah, poetry! It may be why they continually expect my return, having grown accustomed to my
words. Too often have I seen it happen: the reliance on the past to repeat itself, to circumvent
the unpleasant dimensions of the present, and build memorials as talismans; the laying down of
rules — indeed of ceremony — to preserve what cannot be preserved. 

Am I their Muse? I am amused. But I will move on. I must move on. So must they. 

The Boy has informed me that Didi and Gogo still harbor hopes that I shall appear to them. They 

should abandon such hopes, though I wish them well. I may partner with Lucky and Pozzo. I am 

told they are more reliable, particularly Lucky, eager to embark on adventure. And adventure I
can promise them. I have sent the Boy to make my offer known to them. I await their reply. 

In the meantime, I shall seek refuge in Cities without Names, where trees are citizens, where the
Dog is King, where street corners form the edge of the world, where I shall reclaim my dreams
from the trash heap of history, even at the risk of crucifixion. 

I speak no more.