Two more poems.  The remarkably prescient (and yet not) "Tuna Melt" was
written early this year.

Tuna Melt


He liked such places more than he could say.
A mumbling speedfreak busboy cleared away
The old, slapped down a new soiled fork and plate.
The wrinkled waitress, focusing her hate,
Mistook his order, meanwhile loosely pouring
Some cloudy lukewarm stuff he sat adoring,
Tasting the walls, the clientele, the grill.
He peered and ate delightedly until
The shadow of the offices across
The street dispersed as if the sun were boss
For fifteen minutes, looking in.  He waited.
The coming horror could not be overstated.
It might take place outside, where ambulances,
Tour-buses, cruisers, cabs were taking chances
Past lesser vehicles, and passersby
At great unconscious length prepared to die
While, armed, an as-yet unembodied grin
Began to light … It might occur within.
Or not.  That place is safe, if any is,
Whose sadness welcomes other sadnesses.
That place is good, is home, which lets one sit,
Will never close till someone closes it,
And fills your cup unasked while you think, vaguely:
Evil is better than being merely ugly.



All Souls Night


I imagine that twenty or twenty-five years after
the last time we met, Ray returns
and tells me he was wrong
to enter a cult.
He woke up one day - some petty incident
at the seventy-hour job
that let him buy course after course and rise from level to level
of pseudo-power, pseudo-autonomy,
had told him (he let it tell him)
he had wasted decades.  Now -
except for the grey in his still-thick, still
razor-cut hair,
and surfer looks leathered
by something other than sun -
his affect is what I recall:
fanatically eager
for passionate insight,
for my latest galvanizing word.

Dave also appears, with fewer regrets.
In some respects he too has scarcely changed.
Describing the software
that made him rich three times,
the mechanics of bankruptcy,
the careers of his kids, he assumes
my boredom derives
from some flaw in his explanations, which he
repeats.  His youth was vague, obedient,
and gravely, now, he states
how much he has missed art and music,
our discussions of Sartre, Artaud, Hamsun, Bergman,
Antonioni, Lukács - will he list all
the obsolete names?
Whatever self he found, he says,
he never fully identified with it;
nor could he be satisfied only with action, with process.

And Mel, the bottle and pills set by,
trying to regain
with damaged tools his early brilliance,
Carla released from hell,
and Becky, serious at last,
seem likewise disappointed that I'm not.
As I mildly ask them where and how they lived,
show house and haunts,
critique my career,
and fussily pour whatever they want to drink,
some nameless hope is lost.
Perhaps what they feel
is what you feel, cued for
a poem, encountering only
psychologizing,
historicizing, and asking
where is the beauty?  Where is the timeless thrill?