A cheese sandwich was calling me from across the boulevards, but when I climbed through the backyards to speak with it

It had gone. O how I had wanted it for my very own.

Here, in the front of my pants, I had devised a pocket for it

So I might press it to my vulva as I chastised our train’s porter. An absence of ambition

Must not hang tight on the curves of the rails, it must not

Call me at four in the morning and replay for me over the phone

The sound of the bell tower tolling and bats breaking their noses at four a.m. Do not

Call me with your hamburger orders, demands for french fries and crab cakes

To come flowing out of the empty horn of Dexter Gordon. Not 2 in the afternoon,

Not four in the afternoon. Not 8:10. A cheese

Sandwich was calling to me across the wen of her breast, and though preoccupied,

I made time for it, and this is how

I’ve come to land in the gutter. I thought my Italian shoes would ever spare me from the paradigm

Of losing my shirt and camels in an alleyway of the underworld. You knew

A love song once. Once you knew several

Love songs. Now you know none. As fiercely as the public

And the law makers pounded their fists into your back

You never let them leak again from your mouth or anus. Did you hear

The cheese sandwich S., howling to you above the air raid sirens of San Diego?

Did you hear the siren pressed up against the bread, her ass more comfortable

Than any wicker chair? Her voice and teeth astound the earth

With flowers. From the Kremlin

A cheese sandwich was singing to me, and so I directed the driver of my cessna

To veer in that direction. When I arose

From the wreckage in a field of Vessuvian greenery, I knew the dues I’d

Found in the hollow of his tin drum were only passing fancy. A word with you

If I may. You’ve read, I presume, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. In the hospital

I came across a prostitute who is crushing that book between her legs. A small boy

Lit a candle by his window so the song would find it’s way home to him. She

Bites down on the snake, and we both

Know that that’s no good. My vulva

Does not approve. A young boy falls asleep with his hand against the windowsill. An elephant

In his dream is doing somersaults in Washington Square Park. You told me

I should not expect you for tea, but there you were, with the cheese sandwich in your hand. The calendar

Since has broken, my watch spits out its batteries. Across the dales I could hear the terror in her voice. O cheese sandwich

That cries out in the night, I hear your dismay

And I am coming to rescue you at last!