my words become unintelligible.
It says, do not despise your own
I wonder if they see that,
All those foxes. All of a sudden
I’m so glad I have on my wide
Pants, my 10 dollar banlon shirt
The girls wish I was
inside, too. At least, I think so
This much is understood
I go down to Benson’s Burgers
and sit in the parking lot.
Food smell, but I don’t have any money
All I have is the blues
and a ticket for someplace called Cythera
a bus outing on Sunday.
Got this magazine telling about the great
new thing going on in Nigeria
and I have my beautiful high
a green alcove of the evening
called “music”
My voice when it is understood,
piped into dancehalls and restaurants by
this very intricate and lovely machine.
THE BLOND SINNER
Should I be handsome vested and wearing the black
Trench coat of another person’s sleepiness,
Collar turned up over my chin and impression
Of terrible guilt; that I’m here with you
Beautiful as you are anxious, beside you
Wearing your own impeccable decision to be night
In all its mystery and cigarette smoke radio—
Sitting around listening to the clock and the birds
Who are singing their morning which is my dark
Night except for them The single machine comp-
Letes my stranger’s hours and I awaken “used”
ECONOMICS
The idle boys are waiting in the park
Girls fear but girls fear anything
When they have been told these boys
Aren’t thugs, they’re charming
Cut outs and smiling locker doors
Open up the minds of the young people
And reveal them as forms of romance
The naked gymnasium stands among simple
Working class houses whose pretense
Is sitting pretty our solidarity our
Sty of stupid rapport, the miniature cheap
Mentalities MADE IN JAPAN caress her
But she longs to wear black serapes
From bleached balconies to give her sign
To the villagers that he is returning
And the weather reports are indecisive
For one half of the body returns as vapor
To the mind the other half as nerves
The words are the business of the dream
And its wisdom is moving so far away
That easy The street returns us home
Who are thinking of going to Europe
To sit in the classical sunny gardens
Reading newspapers blackened by race
Demonstrations, new chemical states
Rising in the bewildering absence of Europe
I rise now from my vacant chair
Thought depending on application
The room is in favor of longing
A bride illustrating scholarly ideas
Once more apprehends the afternoon
Taking shape in the air over the garden
We hopefully flee to, escaping dark
And unsavory developments in the way
The mind works today forming cabinets
We dumbly put our trust in and sit back
Pleased with this life we living smiling
At how we have apprehended the time itself
How we have put it to work at a profit
How those who can’t understand ECONOMICS
Can steal watches to sell in the park
It quiets the mind to think of transactions
Like this Even the vandals are part
Of the affluence our bodies exercise
And what spirit keeps thanking the heart
For its numerous changes
The book beside you called ECONOMICS
Which will be sold as PASSION FRUIT
In drugstores, bringing back thoughts
Of small consequence Sitting here
Say in a garden overlooking a river
Watching another toll across the bridge
Constructed (it says here) not to link
The country and the city but instruct
Pilots in handling their other emotions,
To thrill the people who look on it
With the steel web of their thoughts
That suddenly traps the air around them
And in it the insects of destiny they
Soon recognize as themselves A genus
Of winged creatures expanding as time does
Seeking the profit of secrets of light
HOW CAN I PROVE I AM NOT MODIGLIANI
We are not capable of lasting fault
Our errors change nothing
Our personal conception like
The vain sandals you wear
Cramp you and smell bad in the rain
But no one says nothing about it
And expect no explanation from
The sky, one moon and one star
We go on and make these mistakes
■
Because I have these things to say;
The moon shines down over it and
Miscellaneous references cloudy
The gold star you pin to my shirt
Another