Lost, I drink my coffee alone on the stoop. She had asked to fix me breakfast But I would not let her. My miniature is one and black. I drink me in when I am not Pressed by the coffee's steam. Cars' casketed phantoms of people Chasing up and down Dunlavy Street of Houston After something--their whole lives after something-- Come and go from consciousness like respiration. The people plant and reap. Who can count all of their Insignificant names?-- Animals that are not created sensible enough To propagate unless lost to frenzy, Caught in structures without meaning. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Bar-Room Buddies We Mongoled Human experience. We pushed it into our mouths As the crisp pretzels of which the shape became salty dust At our tastes: the crispness of life, And we Mongoled human experience. The tequila, that Sandras or Cassandras, or whomever it had beeen At the moment of malevolently blessing our heated and Maddening consumption, was what we left Our wives for; and then hardened ourselves on The springless cushions of the sofas of our friends Whom we eventually forgot the names of: The wetness of human experience that we Mongoled, And felt the bladed emptiness Of stomachs that could not consume food On mornings after. But the Angels of bar rooms continually Appeared before darkened stages where, in front of guitars, We played. They apppeared at various stages to the weeks of the years. They came, silently whispering themselves off As Sandras or Cassandras; Stared up at us for two hours; and disappeared. The reappearance of their light enamored us, and we left And followed but found bats that offered No shelter, and often caves we could not fit into Or were forbidden from entering. We invested our capital In the Silicon Valleys of this great nation. Third-world bitches, in factories, became sick for our chips. We held power. We bred metals and bought the ownership titles Of properties, but could not find a home of the world. We married again and brought forth children Who were duplicate strangers of ourselves. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - The Retarded Legs clamp around the rim-- The whole seated body sticking slightly As moaning howls come from his Paralyzed mouth. It is after having Put him to bed for a nap, and then the pot, That this woman who would dab the bile From his bed like one who napkins a spill from A tablecloth, does not clean away The substance behind the smell Which predominates over the bathroom urinal And aggravates his senses. No woman to do these tasks, And then to rim her hand Under the butt; No woman to drag him from The pot, After she has had his body bent Toward her for the wiping, And flop him onto the bench In the shower; no woman...