and people’s voices talking and I marvel that they can get
excited
and interested over nothing and I flick out the lights, I
crash out the lights, and I pull the shades down, I
tear the shades down and I light my last cigar imagining
the dream
jump off the Empire State Building
into the thickheaded bullbrained mob with the hard-on
attitude.
already forgotten are the dead of Normandy, Lincoln’s stringy beard,
all the bulls that have died to flashing red capes,
all the love that has died in real women and real menwhile fools have been elevated to the trumpet’s succulent
sneer
and I have fought red-handed and drunkin slop-pitted alleys
the bartenders of this rotten land.