Cambridge
Is like a monster with a thousand faces
And a pointy tail
Without lights and sounds
The city empties in my dreams
Like a slept-in bed
With rumpled yellowing sheets
And lost strands of hair
Every puddle marks a death trap
Stepping into their unattractive depth
I could get lost
And pass into the nether-regions
Of the planet’s magmatic interior
Chaucer comes alive in the ironies of my wanton imagination
I smell phosphorus
When I walk these lanes
Burning incandescently
Through my nostrils
All the pains and ailments
Of my old age
And hurts and tears of the middle years
Are seeping through my pockets
Into the thighs like acid
Akhmatova adds intensity to my pathetic self-interest
Cigarette smoke
Paces heartily up and down through the holes
In my lungs
Somewhere along the distance
Trampling through the insides of
A sleeping home
Berlioz makes a racket
I can’t listen
To the empty protestations
Against the sweet nature of life
When love decomposes in my hands
Like a banana past its date of decent storage
I scream
As far and loud as I could
Before the noise from the traffic
Drowns my lungs
On the floor I see remnants of dog food
Torn pieces of New York Times
A dime forgotten in the crevice between
The floor and the kitchen island
Behind me I hear
A rumbling noise like a personal
Nightmare, a helicopter crashing
Into a lost valley of dreams
I want to be naked
And run through the mall
At Copley
And vanish into thin air!
Poof!
My insomnia and depression
Are
deep
deep
deep
like a valley of flesh
Between gargantuan breasts
Where, suffocated in its Pernicious aroma,
I read a love poem
Mayakoswky has nothing on my despair
I walk with my eyes down on the floor
Tracing stains of origins unknown
Trying to craft stories and messages
And hidden opportunities
Until I come squarely to the end of the path
And find that the way up is
Also the way out
