and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming.

I have in my hands only 35¢, it's so meaningless to eat!

I've got to tell you
how I love you always

where does the evil of the year go
when September takes New Yorkvand turns it into ozone stalagmites
deposits of light

It's only afternoon, there's a lot ahead. There won't be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns

We go to Irma’s for Bloody Marys,
and then it’s dark.

that is what you learn in the early morning passing Madison Avenue
where you’ve never spent any time and stores eat up light

If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!

Marilyn Monroe in her little spike heels reeling through Niagara Falls,
Joseph Cotten puzzling and Orson Welles puzzled and Dolores del Rio
eating orchids for lunch and breaking mirrors

your volcanic flesh hides
everything from the watchman

My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Light clarity avocado salad in the morning

and I am feeling particularly testy at being separated from
the one I love by the most dreary of practical exigencies money

Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.

Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not.

It's wonderful to admire oneself
with complete candor, tallying up the merits of each

of the latrines.

since what is done is done and forgiveness isn't love

although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and slanders and pollutes and determines.