In the nick of time …
Montage of repressed memories …
Rekindling the flame …
Rap music …
Prepaid credit cards …
Venomous desert snakes …
The morgue is open …
Seersucker suits …
Off-duty cops …
Palpable moonlight …
Overseas markets …
Deep space research …
Satellite surveillance photographs …
The course of the seasons year after year …
Wearing prescription sunglasses …
Bearing witness to the birth of a child …
The patriarchal Biblical subtext …
Revered group of talking heads …
Host or parasite …
Always remembering to count your blessings …
Keeping surreptitious promises …
Mortal enemies lurking close by …
Dwelling in the twilight zone …
The transience of genius …

In my poetic laboring alone
did the seemingly inconsequential things
about city life
begin to have some kind of existential meaning.
I just wanted to make literary history
with each of the illuminated leaves
from my own set of indispensable and legendary books
but alas my poems and prose still appear to be
a tad too vague and trite for all that hoopla
in the oblong pedagogic shadow you forever cast
or so I was half bitterly inclined to think.
I am such a daring and loquacious fool
with nothing much more to lose or gamble
that at every memorable turn
of the steering wheel
by Heaven
I did write for thee.

What narrow street might yet avail
or did I so choose to explore the maze
in pursuit of your flitting shadow
by glow of the sovereign moon

forever

only to arrive but forlorn wearing tattered clothes
once very fashionable and truly befitting of me
it at least therewith did seem as then
in the mirrors of my ecstatic youth
but with scarce a musical sound to shape
the languishing as when transfixed by a painting
and before the immanent rays of another dawn
to feel like at the singular evasive moment
when death and nothingness so converge
into a dreamless sleep.