In the tunnels it’s earlier than that. Sadly, fifteen bells might ring,

And I’ll have to go and face my destiny. Although,

I never could wait longer than fifteen minutes for Red Henry the barber,

So maybe you’ll see me there. Once nighttime enters the picture you never really can be certain if a moose with Twinkies and fruit pies

Is going to ride into Manhattan with you and the rabbi to visit your friend the painter.

More and more lately, I’ve been forced to walk around waving my hands in the air

Chased by a chef with a furious appetite. I find that I’ve been arriving places earlier than I’d intended. I think I’m still taking as long to go bowling as I did that time I ate my dog on the subway when I was nine.

How I sat through those elongated waits before I’d taken up the habit of scrubbing pots on the train

Is a question that should be posed to my ghost in the afterlife. I was

In terror of meeting Princess Grace in full royal regalia then.

I had dreams of knocking over a bottle of Chinese perfume in her path for her review in front

Of an on-rushing train, and I’d have to attain total grandeur and spread my arms to fly across to the other platform

— Swoop! Brenda tells me the trains are running slowly in memory of my beautiful face,

But Grace won’t mind. If I’m so late the lightbulb dies, she’ll pour oil in the lamp.

From the top of the key, several honey bees were breathing

With tiny respirators made in Ireland. Nearby, hot lentil soup filled the belly of a fat man

Like grain pouring into a silo. At the end of the street a church had fallen down on its knees

To sniff the underwear drawer of the muse of forest fire fighters.

A heavy medallion swung around the card shark’s neck as he ordered macrobiotic food

And shortly, the restaurant keeled over and died.

Since the lepers built a new beautiful body from their old parts

The soup spoon remembered running away with the donut into a field of immortal poppies.

Jesus’ hair seems bounciest in paintings of the crucifixion,

As though it had spent his life swinging with school girls’ laundry in the closet.

One second later, the fry cook and the faun

In nun’s habits, with their hair pushed out like a willow trees,

Filled the head of that pure young thing

With stories of four smoke stacks falling over in an earth quake.

The beautiful card player rubbed his ass against the painter

And being that she had on her lobster claw hat, they vamped to the right

And I don’t know what strange stairways the two tripped down

Or what ironing boards they slipped down in the immense and empty park.

Aint it always the case that young girls with marbles in their pussies can sleep

Just about anywhere, rocking like a boat tied to a dock,

Nothing mussing their hair or their clear complexions

And trout tremble all over them in the bordello?

My mama used to tell me that she crawled into bed with an oyster once

And after that he wouldn’t stop calling her. Under the sea

Her nudity was as long as a freight train.

In the kissers’ mouths of satin there lingers,

Whether you starve it off or brush right up against it,

The graceful climbing of the only child ever burned to death in a fire.

The beautiful card player rubbed his ass

for at least a half an hour

because he thought he was Chaucer

and he thought that was what Chaucer should do.

He’d seen it on the side of a bus: Chaucer

rubbing his ass with a pencil eraser.

I like that, he thought.

And in New Jersey they have a special club

dedicated to the worship of the Moose men.

It’s no secret, I’ve seen it.

You can stare in their windows on Pomeroy Avenue

as they do the Sacred Moose-Dance

Throwing their hands high in the air

old and young men alike

kicking their knees up

going around in a circle, chanting

“Hi-yi-yi-y i— Hi-yi-yi-y i— Moooooop! Moooooop!”

As reportedly, the Moose men did,

In Canadian forests.

Sickness and Death were sitting at the edge of a fountain smoking a cigarette.

One said, “All the fires that we wave around and shudder

Say to me that Yankee fans are sitting with napkins on their laps under the bleachers waiting for supper

To jump up and scare them like a dog that will only drink bottled water.”

From one of his back pockets a passing thief brought forth a dictaphone

Saying “Which of these trains will take me to the fashion district? the V?

What stops will it stop at?” “I am afraid my old friend,” one replied,

“That there could not be a paler destination.” And so the three took to drawing with crayons

The portrait of one who, like me, has the face of a camel, and drives a dune buggy across the sands alone at night,

And who time has injured with an old spoon.

Each day I wear my frock to some asshole’s wedding...