Tall-Town Nixpat

__The city you live in should be a second skin, a sheath
Of streets fitting the fingers like a glove’s
But they are not skin, they are fabric
Traversing intimacy, leading to someplace.
– Where there’s ID-checking bouncers.
And then you are
Way too easily bummed out.

__Should insist, resilience is the word. Good man:
Already doing enough gardening.
Proud of my gay kitchen balcony and you
Worldly-wise talking stamina.
Going downtown a
Rubberneck, a tourist, these paths toward landmarks
Lend themselves to stirring back to the troughs.

__Gawking at beauty is sort of beautiful, and sure
Grief work surpasses all in beauty.
Here enhaloed bade farewell
To lots that broke or got lost, things of
Course, allowed for breakage and loss;
Ruins, vestiges – everybody can do without.
When all’s out of order, no one’s apter than the next one.

__Shirt of Nessus
Still clinging to the unburied potterer, one
Long acquainted with bulwarks and bastions
That should have been taken some little decades ago.
Hoary pals not poked in their season
A story older than dirt.
The city you live in is like a second skin.


March 27, 2012