Snoring girls and boys disported
on floor and futons; air layered with weed;
already someone in the john – I’ll piss in the alley.
No desire left to talk (though talk that night
had been more than noise), or even
hook up as it is not yet called.
Bike OK, in the weeds – or is it already
the car, that leaking Chevy Nova?
(Spanish “no va.”) If the voice
I am had arrived to say
They’re the last intellectuals
you’ll meet with a stash
of innocence somewhere, would I have stayed?
Sunday, or a holiday, or is everyone hiding?
Including the famous imported redneck
cops of that town, beating people
out of sight? I’m strong, can breathe,
can ride the 4.3
miles to my own slum. Here and there
insincere city planners, overreaching builders,
hasty highways created
inadvertently real places; a few old trees
persist. I feel again
the wind, imagine again
the perfect party, voices I could effortlessly
tolerate who will, of course, exist.
