Spare me this drive-by film of suburbania,
white-sweatered frumps walking puffed up little dogs
who sniff their piss as if it were ambrosia,
and me in my university windbreaker, peering through onioned eyes
-earl grey trees, cereal box houses, ranks of dads with strollers in a row

and moving on, these sheep that look too much
like puffed up dogs, and the cabbie with two fingers on the clutch
playing trance of all things and how to rhyme nntz-nntz-
nntzz with turn that OFF you prat?

I don't need a cab, much less a plane. That ship
has sailed; I'm gone, this is the head
gawking at the lopped-off body, this
is break-up sex with the lights all on. I can't not think

of that cup of coffee
I made but never got
to drink, souring on the counter
as the taxi nntzes me away

with no end to begin from
and an ugly jacket, and what kind of god creates a world
where permalove can't be had even for ready money?

All I have is images aplenty, photos pouring
out of every orifice it's so charming
though wanting that fit again
of my eye to your faces, I find only shots
and shots of trees with spiderlegs for limbs,
tops of telephone poles, all the landscape
you could ever want to stomp on, and all
its threadbare trappings-

          The metal railings cold to look at.
          To touch them would be a disappointment.

          The windows freckled on the other side as if by breath.
          How strange that they should cast a shadow.

          The odd-stoned path giving grudging passage.
          Those sooty trees in the fist of the hill.

          The coats deflated in the corner-

and here's a life less still, I want you to have it, the lot of us Tare Panda-ed on the sofas high
on woodsmoke and chatter, singing Gay Bar, Sam with his hand just-bandaged from a glass
cut, Hazel's What book, it's matches you dropped you idiot, you got cut for just matches-