The Room Is My Refuge From Light

Poem

You cannot go, he said--
The streets are still arable.

See--hands are pushing, up, through,
Cracks in sidewalks.

Hear--the skirl (O
the bagpipers have come to town)--

And eyes--thousands, rolling down
Streets, burning.

Come here, by the window--look,
Up there the sun has become inconstant.

                                          A Session

                                  Down in the lowlands
                                  of Delancy Street

in a room
furnished
with one
soiled sofa,
and three
straightbacked chairs
in need
of painting,
gathered the young
to drink beer,
smoke marijuana's,
and discuss
the possibilities
of a new revolutions--

                               and the young girl
                               18 (made pregnant
                               by her pederastic husband),
                               who lay on the sofa
                               twisted like a well-fed boa,
                               when spoken to,
                               and who has the reputed
                               wallpainter of anthropoids
                               with brains in their nuts,
                               said: Man, I'm bored
                               blow somethin' on that sax--

and the inimitable
peer of the lowlands
finished his sweetweed,
twitched, and then blew--

                                and something "like" cool moved
                                amid the sweetweedsmoke.

 Elegy

You say
I'm not:
so trees
bloom?

tired
I gave
love, sat
on grass--

held
your head
up; even
a cop

thought
it new
that a
lover's

eyes
could be
bloodshot:
wakeful,

I knew
only
a dawn
--and you.