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Soldiers fall down.
Do they turn back into men
when they hit the earth?
Green silk L.A. sky;
through the rainbow's foot creeps
a police helicopter.
Toot! Toot!
Happy New Year!
I'm here too!
Vietnamese restaurant --
as close as I've been to Vietnam,
a civilization.
A civilization dies
when its dreamers think they must
sleep to dream.
What season is this
that raindrops do not cool,
but burn?
Mercifully the murderer
seeks to put others
out of his pain.
Why be embarrassed?
You may die
on the toilet.
Somehow the potential indignities of death reduce
in importance the lesser embarrassments of living.
"THREE SLAIN" says the news.
I don't know what
the teapot is saying.
Radio music.
Somewhere, some time people
make this music.
Laundromat. Two cops...
People waiting for clothes
try not to notice.
Flowers and flags --
do flags contain the sex organs
of nations?
Unmarked cop car
pulls someone over,
a kind of terrorism.
"AMERICA CONTROLS THE SKIES".
Then why do we fear
the skies?
Bus, one person
per seat, each half empty --
we can't sit together.
A sound...gunshot?
"A car backfire," instantly
I tell myself.
Tower of lights,
each from a cubicle
where someone worries.
An office building after dark, people still at work.
Hundreds of species
of bugs go extinct each year.
Is man an island?
Traffic stream - flash!
the red and blue
dorsal of a predator.
"THE JEWS KILLED JESUS!"
Patience, patience - someday
they'll thank us.
Not my opinion. It just seemed something one might
say: to realize the expectations of idiots. A kind of
conversation stopper for insane conversations.
Still Cedros Street, but
no cedars on the Latino
side of the tracks.
Mass Avenue:
Palatial embassies, old trees,
sidewalk, an ant.
Putting the posh embassies that line Massachusetts
Avenue in DC into perspective.
Fluff on the rug --
into the wastebasket, landfill...
Who cleans landfills?
Last night, west of here,
a huge bang. Today light snow,
nothing in the news.
Perhaps a record-breaking thunderclap? An explosion?
But it must have been imagined. Had it really occurred,
surely it would be in the news.
My cab passengers
are all afraid, most of all
the two who robbed me.
We are in Iraq,
killing people. But it's all
for their own good.
Subway faces harsh
with straining to hide caring
for each other.
Daylight: seeing
what we do to each other,
we are more polite.
A quick-sand world,
and yet men strive
for gravity.
The morning after
all cars vanished, I'm wakened
by my pulse, and
birds.
Life must be valuable.
People kill themselves
to touch it.
Isn't that what suicide is usually for? To touch
the living?
When, O when
is everything going to come out
all right?
Kill MORE people
or it will be just murder,
not History!
Six Billion people
on earth. This one is
me.
Things aren't so bad...
That's why sometimes I wish
I were a thing.
The lie
I told yesterday,
I believe today.
Special effects now
can make ANYTHING real but
the audiences.
Who in hell
do I think I am?
In Hell,
no one.
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