like when you worry if the cat does not sleep between your legs at night,
that it might be refusing you, not deign of its catty favors
or when you worry to scare out someone if they're waiting
at the elevator when you climb out, so you move a little to the back
to give them time to spot you in the cabin--
or when you're laying in the dentist chair, eyes on the round mirrored lamp,
white ceiling, gurgling aspirator sound coming from your mouth
and you think and you think, why am I trusting this guy, what if he is like
a auto mechanic, who's unscrewing the right bolts to slowly destroy my mouth--
"he keeps finding wrong teeth", you feel old and naive and gullible
and why the help girls are so smiling all the time? what if is it all a scheme--
"they're not really hitting on you", and you feel old and naive and gullible
--open wide, he says
like when everyone keeps looking at you on the streets, men and women need to give a second look at you
as they pass by because you can be really handsome,
clerks chin up want to serve you before the others and you just have to step back
-- and you feel sorry, for every look, for every eye contact
for every imagined brushing against and going by, not stronger and a winner anymore just sorry
like when you're driving and you stop to let someone cross the street
the thing no one does in your city and you clutch the wheel and you pray for
the passerby not to thank you with that white hand with that hurried, scared wave
-- which the passerby invariably does
darkish coat now trotting to the sidewalk isle
like when you're making love and waiting for the moment when your thoughts are carried away
and the thoughts carry you away instead
and when you have the crucial thoughts the last seconds before falling asleep,
the glow of the lamp still burning somewhere next to the bed, dark house
and you are too drowsy to write them down and so you just desperately pray to remember them in the morning
and in the morning they're always gone-- hollow caves of the brain devoured by another vain night
or when you get into the shower and invariably feel sorry for all the water you're going to use, the
soap spread to the dead rivers to the warm seas.