Wakefulness: Poems Read Online Free Page A

little
    girl goes out to the squirrel. Hey, kid,
    can I see your—
    Sorry, time’s up.
    We get to place a small white stone here at the crossroads;
    it can be any one you like. Remember to vote. The clothesline has fallen
    to the enemy somewhere. Yet the awnings are still prim and conspiratorial.
    My chapter met and discussed you. Any number can play, the fleet’s in,
    and with the recyclables, our starched T-shirt.

THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT
    Keeping in mind that all things break,
    the valedictorian urged his future plans on us:
    Don’t give up. It’s too soon. Things break. Yes, they fail
    or they are anchored up ahead, but no one can see that far.
    As he was speaking, the sun set. The grove grew silent. There
    are more of us taking ourselves seriously now than ever,
    one thought. We may never realize about our lives
    till it’s too late, and a man with a dog comes to shoot us.
    I like to think though that everything is its own reward,
    that liars such as we were made to last forever,
    and each morning has a special chime of its own.
    Thus we were pitted against the friend who came at midnight
    and wanted to replace us with a song. We resisted furiously:
    There was too much food on his table, the night was too black,
    while all around us shrinking bands of outsiders
    entered into negotiations with his darkness. It
    seems to omit us, his reasoning, or in the well of time
    we may be overdrawn, and cosmetics come to put a good face on us,
    asking, why this magic wind, so many angles
    against the river’s prism and the burnt blue sky?
    To which one answers, nothing is adrift
    for long. Perhaps we will be overtaken
    even in our happiness, and waves of passion drown us.
    Now, wasn’t that easy? A moment’s breath and everyone
    has gone inside to ponder the matter further.
    Outside, children toboggan endlessly.

STUNG BY SOMETHING
    but my advice is—be comfortable.
    Wear a smock, with fractals. Be native!
    You’ll find people are more interested in your story,
    and they will, too. Revisit
    the recurrent tragedy of life.
    Make sure it has its priorities straight.
    Then—ziff! Jump off the end of a dock.
    Color a monsoon yours, to do business and pleasure with.
    With Smokey, everywhere seemed like pastime.
    Girls in their girdles wandered up
    amazed—they had never seen so many cheekbones.
    The irises on the dump bloomed surlier that year—
    too many tin cans. But you and I were deriding
    ourselves, therefore it couldn’t be over yet
    and the past never happened here. Pounding
    on his front door, one day or other,
    the jasper eggs somehow knew my name.
    It was all over, in fits. The tree-house
    curtains were drawn, laughter strangely spattered the mist,
    stippled the tenement wiring. Oh it’s been gone
    too long, tragedy again visits the dying shires,
    tells one to hang in, it’s over the top
    with you. Looks like
    we’ve been invited to a party . Treason peppered
    the masts of my little skiff. Help! And then
    an eternity of silence. Bores
    shifted on the upper floors, there are not
    enough spider-crabs, spiders of the sea,
    for this embroidered doormat to clinch the departure bell.
    Surely all’s well—
    we’d have heard about it otherwise. Strangers tell
    this in shifts, for a little pleasure, a brittle hour.

THE LAST ROMANTIC
    Not to stumble, to get to tell you something simple
    about the way the grass was being waves, how we broke
    the world after we made it. Then it was a thorn-bearing crescent.
    Now you must be funny. Paranoid gigolos and candy,
    lots of it, over the airways, in fact how could you,
    you knew he was coming today. Well, better to squash
    it once and for all. I was a fool for coconuts, I said
    coconuts. Nobody believes me anymore, they think I’ve been
    let out, but I haven’t, I’m still locked up, and lovelorn.
    Pretty please promise me a dish of scrolls.
    After that one nip everything will be nasty and then it will be romantic.
    They pass him with muffin heads down along the winter