Thoreau turned upstream on the Merrimack
rather than to the ocean

before heading back

~*~

needles and rotting leaves
the floor of the stream steep
water the color of tea

it’s a dangerous
river that was home

shores denuded
when tall pines older than the railroad
were felled to make way
for fiber optic cable

they say you log on
in its branching current

owls and herons take him away
above the hydroelectric turbines

~*~

landing adventurously
perhaps to shout

I remember where you are

the cuisine isn’t that much different
than our second city together

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and that’s the really frightening thing
the bomb-sniffing dog
on the way to the Laundromat, before

~*~

I’ve had enough this season
to satisfy my sensibilities
though it’s still unseasonably warm
and raining

lingering
over
food

this buzzing
finds pollen
wherever
our sun warms

~*~

yet to the Appropriate Authorities
Immigration and Naturalization Service, the United States Government

unrelated by family or livelihood
my next-door neighbor
together on numerous occasions
I further state
intelligent, industrious, socially responsible
capable of

very truly yours,
the prodigal son, without the dissipation

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“you said when you married
you’d still make love to other guys”

the guest at the house party argued
though now
I initially have difficulty telling whether

he’s talking to the bride or the groom
even as he added
“you’re too young to be getting married”

he spent the night anyway
among those of us encamped in sleeping bags
around that second-floor apartment

~*~

we’d had an intellectual tete-a-tete on the corner
and then, upstairs, stoned out and dancing
at the heart of the crowd, I collapsed

it was all ass and thigh from the floor

so she liked flirting with me . Ooooh!
she told me my eyes were a strange, beautiful color

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Two cheerleaders wore white gym shoes
and thick white socks leading
to smooth adolescent legs

and who knew what else.
Freak girls bummed cigarettes like crazy
and you fed their neuroses.

A chubby chick fought and shrieked the hardest.
“God-damn fart-face!” she called a boy
she hit squarely, not to be left out.

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the scene broke up the night D and V
connected the same time R and M did

all in one apartment . for me
only torment and loss

her haunted poster of the gaunt Gypsy
came off the wall a week later

~*~

of course, the living arrangements
would change . “when I first met you,
you were giving off funky vibes
like at a 90-degree angle . all nervous energy”
of course, we remained friends
for a while

~*~

there they were
like a bad novel
on Doubleday Street

there, he smiled from the kitchen
“anyone want some cooked garbage”

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the hunting and fishing store’s
second-floor display window

overlooking the Auburn Traffic Circle
presented three bruins in some arrested motion

of taxidermist art
Mama Bear, Papa Bear, Little Baby Bear

as I mumbled spiraling past,
amused and annoyed many mornings

when nighttime burglars cleaned the place out
investigators didn’t look to children’s stories

rather, they sought someone with a truck bed
that wasn’t too little and not too big but just right

all the same, in the end, they
collared more juvenile delinquents

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the waitress popped up with the usual
“how are you today?”
but rather than trying
to cover up with a phony “fine”
I said instead, “rotten”
and she did a double-take and came back

by the end of the meal, we were both laughing

~*~

arguing we needed music that reflected the Machine Age?
discomfort, bottled up until exploding

and when buzzed by a sailplane
I was all skull, brain, thought, memory

tried sunbathing just now: too restless
wishing to be seventeen again

SHOOT, IT’S A KILLER

the underlying reason for these orthodontics?)

~*~

“well, if you do find a way
to become seventeen, they can’t
throw you in jail!”)

two calls in a day, one wanting
the bank’s certificate of deposit department

and another an alleged beverage survey
calling long-distance from Philadelphia
for the youngest female in my household
(a likely story, probably an obscene phone call

that got hung up on) . old wounds have reopened

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