The practical bourgeois (me)
stammers inwardly as he goes
about his vital daily work.
He knows this aimless world
is falling to pieces
all about his ears.
Or is it betwen his ears?

The suit he wears, pin-striped,
echoes the melody of bars.
If the caged bird can sing,
the cagey bird has a harder time
with syncope, the way life's rhythms
hesitate, flutter and then fly
without wings or rhyme or reason why.

He will not represent or sell
a product in which he can not
counterfeit complete confidence.
If his word is his bondage,
only in ellipsis can he go free.
He skates on thin non sequiturs
and pities those who eat rice,

Because his shadow goes with his feet,
making an ever more intricate dance,
season upon season, repeat upon repeat,
unacknowledged deceit on unacknowledged deceit
he knows what he will not know,
traces unwittingly an Other, Beloved
outcast of himself whom he dare not embrace.

1983

1984