once, i walked down a dark street filled with flowers
all the flowers opened, and spiders crawled out of them
i tried to love the spiders but could not
in despair that i did not love them the spiders turned into butterflies and flew away
leaving me alone in the street which was also my lonely room
but who was i?
i tried to remember but all i could think of was turtles
i leaned out the window but i leaned too far and i fell out
i didn’t have my key in my pocket - it was the first time i had ever been outside without it
everybody knows me, i thought. they will let me in even i don’t have my key
the landlords were piling up my things
all my books and sacred manuscripts from samarkand and tibet and eddie’s deli on west 44th street
i told them there was no sense piling them up because i couldn’t fit them all in my suitcase
i remembered the old days on market street
eating hot dogs and french fries with jack and arthur before the barbarians came
and sometimes even corn on the cob - in the shadows of the market street cinema
we each had a little notebook
mine was blue, arthur's was red, jack’s was crocodile green
jack wrote a poem about the market street cinema
“the floors soft as pancakes with syrup on saturday morning”
arthur wrote one too - “the only man in the audience without a tattoo”
as for me, i was terrified of the market street cinema
even though i knew the red ants and demons of my childhood would never return
any more than the white wings and eyeballs of the million forgotten gods and archangels
we waited through a thousand foggy dawns for angel and abdul and the sailor to show up
and they finally did, along with the prophet and percy and the inspector
who told me many wise things all of which i have forgotten
words are not water, but they can’t float
revolutions come and go like jacks of diamonds
but the queen of spades is still standing on the corner
the cigarette shakes in her hand but the squad car rolls by
