A feeling of something indefinable but not right.
Not comfortable. A rushing.
Sometimes I have to stop
And sort out time at cyberspeed.
It’s supposed to arrive “between 2 and 3 in the morning.”
The very specificity of the promise makes me disbelieve.
If it ever arrives, I’ll say, Good, that’s over.
That little irritating suspense.
The hollowing wait. The stupid want
For good news. No bad. What more can one ask for?
One day more over in the prison
Of childhood. The runaway fantasies.
The retreat into the open mind,
That mysterious conceptual nothing.
Distant fireworks. Boomph, boomph, boomph.
Someone left the cake out in the rain. MacArthur Park.
A half-moon with a mottled veil over it.
The hum of childhood politeness.
“Do you remember me?”
He said, “Yes, church.” I said, “That’s right,”
And kissed his cheek. His gray beard felt so soft.
An engine keeps making the noise of an interior radio
Through which I hear a machine that keeps churning
Out: “For I seem dying,
as one going in the dark/To fight a giant—.”
All the petty errors of life.
Let’s take that wiring apart and see how it works.
Like that. As if it could be done.