LAST BUS LEAVING

You can't return a steak to the kitchen
when you're gnawing on the bone,
but you may already be a winner

skimming the leaves from pools
that used to be the eyes you stared into
until you went blind
beyond a love for cash and silver,
elect me late in the evening
when the phone stays
silent in your pocket,

I am always an out stretched hand
groping for a chin to stroke
and a cheek to slap,

one of these days becomes all of these days
as soon as you and I woke up at the same moment
in different cities, on different coasts,

even the planets weep in numbers that confound
the map makers who cannot give directions to Heaven or Hell,
lost in all places
in between every great thing
that's already over and done with,
the road does not narrow, it vanishes,

the key chain is useless
because the house has collapsed
and the doors are only splinters
of their former resistance.

The new comic books arriving late to the drug store

Back in the day

a week was forever,

a month would

never end ,

and a year was

a trip to the moon,

something we wouldn't

be alive to see

unless everything we woke up

to was only another version

of sleep and celestial sets

on a stage that shifted

with each whim of the heart.

Time for a kid

was an mangy story

that was told between

wars, a hard rock under the

pillow, making life

a long sit in hard seat.

However,

Tuesday and Thursdays

were the days the

drug store put up

they new comic books

on the spinning rack,

World's Finest with

Batman and Superman

in trivial pursuit of

a practical joker in

a top hat who just turned

their home towns into

stinking piles of

ugly cheese,

Aquaman is stranded in the

center of a waterless swimming

pool in a desert town rehab

where he went to dry out

for all that water on the knee

that made his surfing

a glide over a foam of

screams for burgers that

sizzle on a grill

where the beach meets the tide

and becomes a shore thing,

The Fantastic Four

tearing down another section

of Manhattan in their effort

to rid the city of Buildings

that might have housed the

homeless who like wise

might have created industry with

lap tops

and elephantine expectation

that shelter  remaining wits

which help them smile at

invisible gods that feed the soul

large piles of rust-hued rags.

There is nothing better

than Superheroes

and their tantrums,

nothing else in

this time of exploding atolls

and Cuban missiles

makes turns a day

into an hour and

a week into a the hours

from when head hits and rises

from the pillow,

makes a month

a manageable

length of time during

which you can plan

to conquer the world

with the dimes and quarters

you've discovered in cushion cracks

after each of your parents cocktail parties,

aunts uncles and insane friends

who have no coins for

the parking meters that

have caught up their errant sense of where they are,

all this glory in addition to the fact that a year

is only a minor concern, a wonderful conceit,

another twelve months of

making the universe bend to your will and whim

is the best thing you can think of

over a new Flash or Captain America,

your breakfast cereal crackling under the

milk and spoon,

Nothing beats a bag full of Marvels and DCs,

except maybe

your mom's cooking

and your Dad's collection of pipes

and his fully stocked liquor cabinet,

the key to which I stole

and could use

when the comics were read,

the TV was off

and everyone else in the house

vanished into rooms

and snores

that rock the blocks that built

the houses in the shadow of a downtown

odd monsters smash with

a snort and big feet

until I appear in drunk dreams

with a towel wrapped
around my neck

and beat them to a pulp

all while the room spins

and lunch and dinner are lost

on every stick of furniture,

the taste of victory is not what it used to be.