The warm spell is over, we’re back in the deep week.
I need to be aesthetically perfect to get through the week.
I need to be Mary Tyler Moore to get through the week.
I’m wearing flared slacks, my blouse is immaculate.
The past was so much easier, we know how it turns out:
the judges genieing the bad men away to the cornfield,
dismissing our failed wishes as improvidently granted.
Sing, cable news, of the map of the United States.
I and the country leave February limping, feet sodden
with menthol and medicine, numb clods of loam.
Ten or eleven states will vote for Mussolini tonight.
Something ends this day, solipsism, prayer, maybe my laziness.
My boss returns from Málaga tomorrow with commands
but today I go truant, wander afield from sallow responsibility.
I walk by the Trump Building on my way back from lunch.
The atheist clouds stream upward, indifferent, behind it.
Manhattan is an aircraft carrier, watch all the legless
choppers depart it toward the island or the west.
I belong here after all, I think, the bed is made and lain in.
I’ve always thought I’d die here, but also that I’ll never die.
Ten dollar Diet Coke-and-salad afternoon and the prudence
to accept that I know nothing, feel nothing, am nothing.
Today America I mouth my song to you, we are nothing.