you’re poker straight when the hammers ring
spaced out on irresistible crime
like tumbleweed in the gardens at versailles
but no more lost than here
with its smashed windows and chalk outlines
side-swiping vices and missing-link groove
i knew her when her sterile self-erasing style
scratched untidy laughter on the laser trail of insect cynicism
she was handmade like the centuries are turned and
hallowed out by phantom elevators
carrying sexual intelligence to the next plateau of naiveté
how pathetic to be paranoid in a place this weak on history
where exiles preen their leash dragged ecstasy
in a debatable twilight how social to sense the hours
stretch unbroken like exhausted slaves
somersaulting false frontiers in the tranquil speed of space
when it’s back to your bluff self
calling in sick with the abstractions and plastic aches that idle wild
in the shortest distance between too many points
There is no use there is no use at all in smell, in taste, in teeth, in toast, in anything, there is no use at all and the respect is mutual. (Gertrude Stein)