JOKES FOR STRANGERS

All 21st Century day
Long I write these jokes
For myself and strangers

For the cats also, stuck
As they are in the airshaft
As am I, breath

Meandering through its spatial
Orbits, circling the eyes
That goggle spritely through

These habitual arrangements and I
Am a joke too sometimes
The way a horse burns down

To bridle and the mind lingers
On a cake, we are all plastic
Miniatures trembling through the acoustics

Electrified, my sword bending like
A cactus, the ruthless wind
Upon it, I thought it terribly

Important to bed
A woman of learning
To feel The Sonnets

And fill the empty drawer
A bus stampedes
Down Ninth Street, cauterizing

Certain possibilities of space
I can’t tell you
How much it means to lose even

An unwanted quantity
Of variousness, as perhaps
All my decisions end

With hard looks into the oily distance
Of urban mirage, fuck
Not getting a job, I have kids

To pollute, Palestinian kids, Italian
Kids, kids like myself, wrung whiter each
Genealogical turn, who’s looking

Out for us? The president? Even cars
Crossing the street are doomed
To simple sympathizing over the inglorious

Physics of contact, they are not human
And therefore have no problem
Staving off the delirium of hate, you have not

Died before, you are no
Perverted ghost lifting a skirt
Through the empty pang

Of regret, you are not the resurrection of George
De Chirico, who died the year Denver
Lost its first Super Bowl, the year I was

Weaned and stamps cost an unlucky
Thirteen cents, which doesn’t mean colonnades
Are any less haunted, women

Rolling tremendous wheels of cheese
Along their claustrophobic geometries
I may have lost

My attention for Logic
But I see beautiful
Children circumventing cruelty

Nearly every day, what have you done
For the safety of our feelings? Have you
Offered your seat on a crowded subway car

To a man in perfect physical health
Because he had tears in his eyes? Neither
Have I, not yet, but at least

I considered it in writing.