6581. POSTCARDS

POSTCARDS

You are one sight better than reserved and, kept for 

time, you have read the brittle newspapers and stopped;

supplying tripping words which ended as quickly as

they'd begun, and just as swift on every tongue. You

have watched the news and, stopped short by the vice

and the horror of men, continued gaping to seek a hole

in some paper-craft  -  a kindled origami of imagination

and worth of sorts. There are no needs unmet by savage

weddings  -  marriages of place and time, reason and rhyme,

unfettered dice hanging from some tree : cat's eyes,

double three's, something to go home with.

-

We measure such value in buckets

-

And, while no one seeks to return alone to the narrow

walk-up on twenty-third, its glazed windows made gray

and sad by smoke and the pallor of every city in a knot,

return alone you do. Your new coat is memory.

Your torn gloves are regret.

-

Up sixteen stairs, to the left, and two over, Number 371

is yours alone  -  another pile of glossy magazines, string

ripped broadly around the New York Post, two soup cans,

and something the cat forgot to eat. Somehow, the dripping

faucet still drips  -  but not delight, rather sensation seeks to

escape.  Undaunted, every valve in the building is doing the

same thing. It keeps you up at night  -  all this torment and

noise, the wheeze of circumstance, the awesome clang and

the puddle of death growing. Something leaks everywhere,

you shrug. We measure such value in buckets.

-

In this desert, the rain sends postcards home.