Opportunity

This is a big gig.

From here, there will be no
hiding in a private nightclub
beneath the blank beat
of another authority.

That will be history.

Instead, you will squint
in search of something
humming like a wire
in the soul of everything.

You will be a bodily
phenomenon,
just like everyone,
even trees.

You will see yourself in trees
and rocks
and garbage.

You will twist through mazes of choices,
each choice a chance to honor
a possible destiny,
even ecstasy.

You will know indignity,
disgrace and shame.
You will have no one to blame.

Sometimes you will smile
through eyes like glowing stones.

There will be no days off.

Do you want the job?



.

"No Expectations"

A song by the Rolling Stones

It starts with slow strummed chords
—and a sliding steel line
whining over them.

Between each twang,
an eerie laughing stream
flashes over stones.

A somber see-saw rhyme
gliding over the steel line
laments your leaving here.

The flashing stream
grows into piano notes
that sparkle over the stones.

You’ve got no
expectations
to pass…through here…again.

And a last twang
hangs in the air
like a sigh.



.

The Life of a Solo

He understood each solo
as a small destiny of choices:

making one gambit meant
denying so many others

and obliged him to ride out
his choice till he reached

a burst of new possibilities
and then he would choose again

one of them
in a flash of a gamble

chasing a shapeliness
for turn after twisting turn

until he ceased choosing
and the solo was over.



.

Big Lady

Then came this
big jiggly lady
bustling up the sidewalk.

Wow! Wide! With
queenly pride: her stride
made waves in the air.

I stood there
spraying the pavement
in front of the store

and saw her
sort of shiver
when she passed this

old car
heaped in the street
with its face bashed in.

This jumbled her
rhumba. She stumbled.
And stopped

under a sky
like an eye

hovering over us
with a big blank gaze.

She sighed. And
started striding again

toward the store.
I stared hard

at the sidewalk
and squeezed my hose.



.