..........
.............The Poetry Of
................... Richard Brooks
...... Parts
.......
....... Crust is all
....... that I've got left
....... of this loaf of life,
....... and don't you know I never eat
....... the edges of anything, ever-
....... so I'm stuck with the unfinished rind
....... and all the time in the world for things
....... like Canasta, but my deck has the two of hearts
....... missing
....... and one
....... bent jack.
.......
.......
.......
.......
.......
....... transmigration
.......
.......
....... birds
....... on wires and bugs
....... on leaves and me here
....... holding this secret
....... softly as a thread
....... of
....... light
.......
....... all things
....... delicate, require
....... an exquisite balance
.......
.......
....... this secret
....... is so small
....... i barely know i'm holding it
.......
....... it was precious once
.......
....... i rode it
....... on my handlebars
....... like the thing i wanted swiftly
....... to get home with me, unwrap
....... and look
....... and look
....... at, eyes too big
....... for the face
....... they sat inside
.......
.......
....... i felt it entering a pore
....... and traveling
....... to my heart
....... where it has lodged
....... and someday it will stop- the heart,
....... but never
....... what's within it. it will fly
.......
....... off
....... somewhere
....... and wait for me
....... next
....... time around.
.......
.......
.......
.......
.......
....... The Summer Before
.......
.......
....... The year I rode the subways was a
....... Dante journey, sure, I was a running sore
....... among the more nightmarish gars and goyles.
....... That was
....... New York nineteen sixty eight, the year before
....... the media's Summer Of Love. Sitars
....... were tunin up even as assassinations
....... whipped on past the consciousness like billboards out a
....... Chevy Malibu window whips the appetite for more
....... than fucking factories and slums- fuck that.
....... I wanted to see a beach- boy, I was
....... scruffy perfect, hair grown partway down my collar-
....... muttonchops, and only cause I
....... shook too much from booze to use the razor.
.......
....... I remember all the pretty girls were
....... somewhere else. The ones who looked at me
....... were fat old ethnic ladies, sitting
....... with their knees apart in dresses big as drapes. I
....... remember how they always made me feel; they saw
....... my two day, piss stained underwear
....... and even worse, I knew those heifers wouldn't care.
....... They watched my crotch- shifted slowly
....... cheek to cheek.
....... That town, it may have toddled for some
....... but it ran my sad and hitchhiked ass
....... right down that summer
....... before the
....... Summer.
.......
.......
.......
