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ONCE I WENT BACK
To a house where I once lived
No one was home ( and the door was open)
So I just walked right in
The tables and chairs
Were all still there
Just as they once were
The fading grey light
Seemed surprised
To see me again
As it poured through long windows
Like some benevolent creature's eyes
A bird in his cage gave a chirp
I sat down to think
As a droplet drummed the sink
I couldn't imagine why I felt
A vague fear
Not a soul
Only silence
And a pulse in my ear.
WOMAN AT A BUS STOP
In her day
She was beautiful
Now things and feelings
Cling to each other
Like the trembling
Brown leaves
On the sycamore.
The boulevard empties
Its rush hour
Only the swirling leaves
And the memories
Of this bus stop
In the old neighborhood.
Once, one kiss
Could draw blood
From his lips.
Maybe she could never tell
Why she did what she did:
Her words, a slap in the face
Now she visits his grave
But then, in time, saved
By another „one so sweet"
(„How I love you just this way",
He must have said over and over
Yet, in time, turned bitter
Full of rage
She would gaze
Down his back
To the bottoms of his feet
Curled and wrinkled
As the swirling
Dead sycamore leaves
While he pounded against her
Like the dark Adriatic waves
Against the sea wall
Where the Slovene Inkeeper
Had once said
Invading Turks were thrown
She hissed like that bus door
When he slid his hand into her
She had eventually curled
Into a ball to protect herself
From his welcome blows.
Then there was a son.
Suddenly, girlhood is gone.
Then, a daughter:
„ I wont hail a taxi
Yellow as her hair was.
Even the car grill
Looks like her smile!"
Things and feelings cling
Still, so many hopes unfulfilled.
A new love interest?
A quick look in the mirror
Of shop window glass.
While all that soon disappears
Forever walks past.
Slightly bent
With her bags,
Dutiful.
In her day
She was beautiful.
VISIONS OF APPOLINAIRE IN BUDAPEST
( *Vilmos is the Hungarian equivalent of Guillaume)
If Paris is the City of Lo
Then Budapest is the City of Adultery
City of Asthma and Suspicion
I address you in yr babble
But hear nothing back
In the new hotel bar the surly waitress
Is backlit with blacklight
Long teeth gleaming against a fake tan
The bullet- headed bouncer
Pokes an accusing finger into his leather pouch
Old lovable hateful City
( „Unreal city
Under the brown fog of a winter noon")
Wheezing white ghost
Of hysterical car exhaust
That makes a bridge across the Danube
The thick- thighed harlot
On broken heels
Her tar- smeared eyes crazed
On the boulevard of the coming Plague
Domes, their spines, grey insects of dawn
Snaky tongue of river fishless run
To the sea you cant remember
To the prophet's name forgotten.
Severed heads, row upon row
Rigged up to say:
______ ____ ___ _____ ____
Over and over the same way.
Driving through the flak in a frigidaire
I see you on the screen
Vilmos* Apollinaire
With yr bandaged head and eyes like mine
Everyone's due to get the Spanish Flu
That killed you in 1918.
Now there's so much porn to download
Vilmos you'd be amazed.
And so many viruses that run
In a thin red line
From the pustulent spider bite I got on my back
To the lymph gland under my red arm pit
That swelled up because of it.
Red viral fingers of harpies
Tried to throttle my heart Vilmos
Force open my mouth
And make me swallow
One swift neck- snapping
Shot of poison information
But the glandular gate
Like big bosomy lines of poetry
Held fast
I lived Vilmos!
The garlic and the bad red wine
Must have flushed out my system
You accepted my alms of puke
( Maybe Im not any good?)
Clinging to the porcelin toilet.
But like you I've gotten too sick to get well again
They're down there in the basement somewhere
Vilmos or maybe even down in the sewer
And someone will have to bring them back.
Like a paperdoll chain of clowns
European cities make open X's
Of their arms and legs
White faces, rougy lips
Black riverlets of poison mascera
Down their cheeks.
Trick lions roar
In front of a bowl of red seats
The tuxedoed tamer
Cracks his whip
The show starts
The lions are hungry
But the red swollen lymph gland curtain falls
Just in time
Goodbye Vilmos
There's nothing more you can do
My lungs are sore
From breathing the smoke these
Children blow in my lit up face
As I strum a song
At the end of the age
On a make-shift stage.