4552. MADE TODAY

MADE TODAY

Lending the air the grace that it's due, I

walk the long streets to this alley : old lights

are playing down on shiny pavement, wet forms

struggling through dawn. The new morning

air beckons, calling, as if to say - 
hasten now and take me in.

All of a sudden it is an old day in a new form :

a 1955 in a Beagle Alley, or some other gray time

held short in memory's palm. Best minds, destroyed

by madness,  starving hysterical naked, dragging

through negro streets at dawn. My mind, set on a

swing like a master-weaver's string, draws its own

conclusion, pulling the sadder needle of time.

-

If I must confess to something, today it will be this:

I have squandered, in my way, my own occlusion of

matter  -  all that was given to me I have wasted.

Everything but the burning, the intensity of the longing

and the drive  -  'the ancient heavenly connection to

the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.'

-

Here, here, now, today. Does anyone know what I mean?

Can someone pull my shoestring tighter, and let it be then

around my neck? I choke on my own reality crying,

lending the air the grace that it's due.