27 to pass [2009]

morning

snow  steel  and asphalt

grind down rooted slumber

baring a trusted nightmare

to the scrutiny of dawn

and as she fades through

the gauze of an icy low light

I am left prone 

to ponder another confounding day

(later)  the sitting room is illumined

with the wife's washed walls

while the corners of yesterday's news

curl from tea steam

and when the strings of Mingus

suddenly turn tempting

an impulse begs me tread the shag

and I do  with sweating

and a limp

noon

after prying an education from

the dull jaws of mid-day  I am out

prowling down the freshly plowed walk

toward some diversion

  the post office     the video store     the market

or the D.I.A. --

(where once I choked on she-shoveled shit

and spat up fraud onto Warhol and Hockney and her)

but I land wound     ticking at the library

fraught with tomes of Olson and his Black Mountain gang

(then)  I track a trail of my own sweltering perversions

back down through     to humid home

where I am embraced (she is happy to smell me)

and the borrowed books spill sloppy

like me  
             from my hips

interlude

he is not long dead

as some scholars have maintained

but  is still     trembling

night

four sandalwood candles     burn low

making quiet warm

(and) Erika is at the hem

asleep  in chiaroscuro 

we have observed a melancholy

with losing  and an abrupt dead

  we've wept into dusty rags

we've been  late and not at all

and we are exhausted eager

                                                                         for the 27 to pass