One flight up, How relaxed, crossing wires

an odyssey of error humbles the cosmopolitan
sense, johnny's recurring heartache, his skipole
knifing a snowy bank on your pain,
and everything opens up like a racehorse
in a forest, something grows and the sidewalk lets go,
so faces move in from the rain throwing tools
and knives and questions, which, unanswered
close the covers of a book we insist on living in,
only there are roofs rising off the sidewalk
and small birds grab them in their beaks
to string them, these pearls, like beads or arrows
along the street that runs from here to Ferdinand's,
you know, the egoist with the split tongue.
To get there isn't easy under the roofs
fitted with dusty attics, perfect hideouts for books by moonlight
and tea by noon. Anything to clear the streets
of all those walkers, in fact anything to put near your ear
and cough by, anything to put in your pipe and smoke.
You see it doesn't matter if the rugs comes out from under us,
because summer feels better in the desert in spite of the insects

who wish to nip our ears, but they are stopped
by a deadly spray under one roof, the spray of the sea,
as it rises to quench my thirst and it does
because i am innocent about death
and never wish to kill the idea
of a home, of a sad lonely night
when fiery ovals parachute out of the sky
pickin up our heads so quickly the pipe
drops out of our mouth, and i reach to defend myself
know that forever i must stop the pain, the only purpose we're
___sure of
The rug comes out from under us
revealing fiery skies that think for themselves,
midnights overloaded with print, noon of the winds
knocking your window out over a bed, familiar as home
and the girder chained day, but you don't object

because it is the way of things to move in circles
partly because color partly because of the great mountains
and trees thrown into it, like a pearl tossed
into a pod, the way some tiny gardener gets a thrill one day,
opening it up and becoming rich, thus a shiny new tractor
arives and everyone sits down to watch.
We're all tiny gardeners in a sense, waiting for that tractor
and rehearsing without any clothes on as we move around and
hope.
We're all things moved by color through mountains and into trees
thrilled by tiny gestures, a bright necktie, friendship, everything
tossing us: a frenzy, a blue, a giddy gulp.