Nothing of the son occurred, of course,
not the evil dreams, not the dementia,
neither bovine diet nor bestial appearance,

Like I get this phone call from Shirley MacLaine,
it's the middle of the night, right,
she's all confused about time,

They cut off hands and composed cantatas;
They gutted their neighbors like fish and released
The shape of spirits from bonds of ebony;

Penicillin was discovered in a moldy petri dish
in 1928 and by the forties was called a miracle drug
and by the fifties had become both widely available
and cheap, which is to say that penicillin arrived
in time for me, who without it would have died
a child on more than one occasion, but didn’t
and grew to see the things around me die instead.

Like doe-skin mittens, mottled marigold
And pinned up by the roadside on display,

The sidewalks are wobbling in the god-awful heat.
        Ninety-eight in the shade,
Where there is shade, as New York lies locked under
        Layers of high pressure

Bottom line, it doesn't have one;
or if it does, it's for the souvenir value,
a knickknack marketed under ghastly light

A sound like the sound of the sky on fire, like Armageddon

Less bright it was slighter
than your recollection
miniature in fact

There are worlds, unwieldy, dreadful,
Difficult to grasp, just pick one up
And it grasps you, its grip of iron;