Sex is sex and politics, and speed has killed
the shoeshine boys. Eat fast or be eaten.

so you sat down to mourn
what became a corpse of light

Like I get this phone call from Shirley MacLaine,
it's the middle of the night, right,
she's all confused about time,

   I was aware that people look at
the living, and wish for the dead.

until, as if in darkness he craved the sun, at last he reached
consummation.

My brother's eye was painted
clear in family portraits.

She thrust upwards and screamed .
Her cat woke, leapt off the windowsill,
and broke a vase containing dried Latvian flowers.

      Gin-weary, temple on the pane,
      I watch the props begin to shake
      The sunlight . As we climb, the plane

And still there is no season's story told
by words, expressive, eager to explain;
no winter's tale will pass from mouth to mind;

For the sake of argument pretend
we don't know who they are, this couple,
one on either side of a cast-iron tree