Subway Solipsism

Today

On the platform

You spotted:

Tiles.

Mice.

A Dude with dreads.

A stranger's ass.

In-The-Corner Prophet was saying,

There's a lota dead people walkin' around here look like me

Meanwhile,
Something impossible twitches in the corner,

But, nobody'd believe it.

Piss-In-The-Corner Tom zips
And the train arrives.

You board.

[  The tube you slither was meant to relieve pressure from Sidewalk's chest
Back when Sidewalk banged on the ceiling with a broom to quiet the street; Back

When the dusty rusted riveted beams 

Were un-dusty and
Un-rusted.  ]

Meanwhile,

The Prophet is
Weaving her dusty beams from twitching dark. She's

Unshaven,

Clear-minded,

Unsung.

The Barely-There Woman in the corner is posh in her winter furs;

She wears red, black and silver, and

Gives no shits
About

Rusted beams or twitching dark or The Prophet

Across the compartment
Who

Has just as little concern

For the sex of

A fur-lined

Tomorrow.

-JV

'Till You Leave

Before each morning
God turns over in bed and gets called in
to work at some ungodly hour before the sun scratches
herself to poptarts and shower-coffee

"Eternally," God cries, "the salad tongs
manage to un-clip themselves precisely before the brunch-time rush!"
and then, God
sighs
Forever and Ever.

Meanwhile, you providently
complain, until your buck-fifty raise,
of hugs being too expensive,

'cause you needed a soft December once,
but December rushed off, like an asshole,
to meet fireplace-snug February in front of some impossible hearth
to fervor on the floor and
forget,

but,
it wasn't 'till morning
it wasn't 'till 
anything

-JV

The Lanyard

 The other day I was ricocheting slowly 

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

- Billy Collins

Middle-School

 

When I was a kid

& he had pimples

& he was a god

& I was everything else,

I avoided certain investments he made

and stuck helicopter seeds to the bridge of my nose, instead.

-JV

Emperor Tod

 

His Highness,
whose retinue is pots and ants,

sneezed himself awake

so hod

that now

his ahm huts.

He presses his grubby finger to

the morning-crust corners of

his bulbous face.

He will flaws daily

t' keep

The Man

out-a his mout'.

The cornetti

had best take care

not become indignant about his waking them up,

or else.

Get Drunk

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

-Charles Baudelaire