"being attenuated"

I will breathe
My torrent once

More and read and read
And get lost
In the feeling of being

A part of the feeling
Of being there and knowing it
Here, I have had too much

Free coffee and the paper
Cut on my finger stings like a divining
Stick from back when

I was a boy in Colorado
Which I liked tremendously
And in a different

Manner than I like being
A man, the Romans
Were bored, the Americans are

Bored, I move to bare
My little splitting
Inside as it reds between

The pink on the end
Of my pointer
Finger and there is happiness

In its exhibition, a belief
In the world as a place to go on
Living as foul men

Go on tanking
In tranquility, something
I misread and I would

Have them like Ted
Talking in it, perhaps building
A harmless mobile of air

Which could carry forth in a spinning
Wince as I run into
Jeff on the F, then off at 7th Ave.

To meet Ben for some Sunday
Beers and a little ping
Pong at the underground Mexican

Billiards hall, where Hilda
Gives us Hornitos gratis
And we play seriously as little children

Do, I’m never not in
The picture, my sneezes are borne
By the wave and then returned

To me in a draft, I wake
In a catastrophe and move about
The city in a tiny

Raft of glee, my gaze is always
Already yellow because I’m not severe
Like a dancer, nor perverse

Like Balthus, though that does not stop
Me from falling into my own
Leers, reeling like a knockout and I

Have struggled tremendously with people
Who would not be loved, a cuckolded
Prince sung his child to death, today I thought

About how beneath
My beard I am
Growing old and in a dream

It was gone, my dream
An ink composed of fine
Bone particles

From the foreleg
Of a horse, Chico tags love
Stinks, I’m not crazy

Just enthusiastic, breaking
Into stagger like Thelonious tiptoeing
At the plateau, moons

Are not silent, there is nothing
Written on your fingernails
The gratification of graffiti lingers

Within the greater ensemble
Of nostalgias, Lunatic
Fringe comes on the radio

In the ice cream shop
Where I stop
In for coffee every Tuesday

And share my affinity
For Al Green with the ice cream
Lady as outside

The snow’s fleeting white
Wastes into gray, just as the sun’s icy
Beams bleed through the haze

Of Third Avenue, if I am as real
As a hamburger I am not harnessing
Myself, nor harassing

The world with the promiscuities
Of my eye, your body
Is oscillating and I want

To bed in between
The waves of
That becoming, this body

Is a thoroughfare that enables
Various energies
To transact and curve and to lose

Love is to feel
As if a significant piece
Of oneself is being

Attenuated, so I go
Out to walk the streets freezing
And overheated, blank

As a plank of
Wood, the leaves left
Skeleton by ice

And grafted to the grates, I heave
Winter by its latest
Air, ears gone slate as the train

Billows into its burrow
Of tile and I am on
My way back to Brooklyn