a pause in the getaway

Forsaken by the ideal man,
A heartbreak does the best it can.

Whatever it can,
It doesn't have Originality
(The thing foremost upon its mind).
If it does, then it was not that kind
Of heartbreak. Or that kind of man.

So a voyage
Doesn't come as a cliché.
The wound just itches
Till it gets away.
Away--to the desert,
to a hideout in a tree,
to a hole in the ground.
In my case, to Paris.

I never made a claim
to Originality.

Black and white, and bridges,
Metaphors fit to slap me in the face.
I used to find reminders in every unlikely place.
Now they find me--the lovers
Making public love
In every shaded,
in every sun-drenched,
In every unsecluded public space.

Paris will drive you on, and on,
Walking until you faint, and cry, and heave
With empty stomach and lonely-heart gangrene,

Will push you through a hideous, ignoring
Crowd of ugly summerers
Who talk like you,
Like you would, if you had someone
To talk to.

At the hour of communal accord
The street will suddenly
Evaporate, to leave you
Stranded in the blinding, blazing heat,
Alone, and thirsty--the unmoored
Foreigner completely obsolete.

The rain will come just when you feel at peace,
At last, and you will creep
Beneath an awning,
Watch the old men eat
And you will shiver, freeze,
And you may weep.

You'll spend your money
Till it's gone. That was the point
Of having it. You keep
On walking, since it's free.
What's more, you stay alive. Does not that
Tell you something? Something
You can think about in a month, a year, or two--
Make sense of, probably, in three.

Paris beats you in the head,
Paris goads you in the knees,
Drives you breathless to its highest point,
Then leaves.
The view from Sacre Coeur
Means nothing from the top,
But everything when you have come back down
And cannot see it anymore.

(summer of 2005)

don't make me move

A girl walks
By tossing her angel hair
With rosewood chopsticks;

The twilit wind makes her
Skirt swish. It is time, I say, for
Revelry and exhaustion in the waterways,
But everyone is leaving, and frantic
They seem to know
Where or, at least, to extract
The last from the last.

The redbud lights seem
To have gone out,
But the moon reflects on the metal
Plate embedded in the tree,
And people are going home for the summer,
Just as the nights are growing longer,
And the weather ripening for youth.
It is time for workers to think of holiday,
But all the youth are thinking now of work.

the effects of violence on television

Following a suggestion
made by a poignant memoirist (who,
shall remain nameless, if we are lucky)
I came home from the library, the hairdresser’s,
and the grocery store, took up a rolling
pin and whacked it against the television.

A long crack striped the screen,
much more assertive than those uncertain
grey worms of static that
buzz, begging you to wait.

My brother left his baseball bat, again,
in the hall. I wielded it experimentally.

The practice swings were
successful. I lodged his
ball in the VCR, which feat is not mean.

Accompanying myself with a sharp
nasal hum, I reenacted
Norman Bates’ famed obsession,
then ululated like the savage,
square-jawed princess of the afternoon, taming
the mythic world in aluminum underpinnings.
I am glad no one was there to see.

As I cut swaths against
the coiled tubes, slicing
them as for a tea sandwich,
the colored wires stood out like nettles
in an unkept field. I vacuumed the shards of glass.

I hate that memoirist for her
good-looking success.

I suppose I saw
through her narcissan pool and found a murky
bottom, the fiendish
delight of beating rerun shows
to death, the joyous effect of violence
on television.