And nearly empty of thoughts--Herb's woman, Jeanie, Behind the Ellison Building standing With concrete drilling its stiffness Through her soles. There had been a time-- With face raised from her age-smelted pose To the ever firm stories of that building-- That she would think of receiving her paycheck so she could Go to K-Mart and have something. But now years on top of each other, Uncountable to her, She continues guiding The few of the masses of cars That turn into the lot Where to park: in winters Conscious of the visibility Of her cold breathing, And summers with the scents Of greased telephone poles And sights of light gleaming off Car windows, she thinks Of buying old junk from garage sales For her yard sales, with the same prices, So as to recall the sounds of human voices Other than her own. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Brumfield His job was a novitiate where there was no operator's manual With which to have faith in, and no rules But to move with the dustmop pushed before him Along the empty corridor, and then down a staircase Where he could descend to more passive depths in cleaning. At home he would smell the odor of his bare feet coming to him; Would see the blue under his toe nail that looked like marble; And these would be dominant sensations Though he would be vaguely aware of them. Beneath his bended legs he would sweep his hand To capture a fuller scent as his fingers would flick To capture a fuller scent as his fingers would flick His unshaven face. Then in his only room where the bare mattress Was lain along with his leather jacket And the dirty underwear cuddled around a clean toilet-- Where the Rosary hung on a wall And the guitar leaned in a corner-- he would do his push-ups. Most of those early mornings some train Would pour its breath to the weeds At the edge of the tracks, losing them In sound and mist of a voice Screaming out, alone, Through the cold and the living. His arms would tremble With the body weakening, and then demobilized, to the floor Before the count of fifty. Through the fogged condensation Of the upper corners to a window He would glance up at the train-- Each car imagined as the girlfriend, Cindy, Or the seminary, which he never Grasped or rejected and so They slipped away; Or his mother, who with cancer Began to close herself off to him-- Grasping one of those trains appearing at the time With the familiarity of two strangers Who recognized each other's desire to remain such. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Oracion A Traves De Gasshole (Patron Saint of Respiratory Therapy Workers)