Yesterday and Today

We sail away in the smallest boat, on
the tide of a dripping faucet

& who hasn't been drunk on the other guy's wine?

A Great Vision for small print
A snatch in conversation
               and is this really me
quite possibly, ten big toes and a grasping reflex
miraculously side-stepped brutality
      (for now)
grey rain of every day and
the private lining of a crowd

who's seen the inside of his mind
beautiful, fine, but the scene has changed to wild
frozen waste on the membrane
(trampoline)        between sitting on the sidewalk
and the oily wake of legs, never walking
always striding
to appointments with instinct and flair
brutal, human, and irreproachable.


*

Rip the wild vine
off the house — vicious morning
gardening, mental and necessary
Hanging out the window like a gargoyle
& the mourning squabs reach out terrified and blind

Because there's no music? because
it's shrill, echoey, cold? Engines
idling ignominiously?

The green light sneaks through the window
no more, and no more will it violate the violets

In a pile on the floor, its sweetness
mixes dust and dew
and the day dissolves
like icing sugar in your pocket.