You have a raspberry silk suit.
May I fuck you in it?

“What changed? Same maisonette in West London,
the straight shot of Talbot Road, held onto in spite of everything—
one’s original intended went away, someone else eventuated—

I dropped my new shoes in the stream, thinking perhaps
They would get there before me, like two drowned Jews
Trundling along the seabed to Jerusalem. My immigrant parents lost patience and thrashed me.

I could only guess that the blade leapt out
to protect them, like a strong father his family.

I picked up just enough politics to frighten my mother,
and the slick, witless phrases I used about girls
were a mixture of my father’s and those I remembered

A girl reclining by an open window
I do not say this was
the only thing one saw that day.

Confused sentences sweep across
the windshield. Then nothing but white
commas exploding out of the night’s

This roller coaster was condemned 
in 1925. You remember that, how the shingly 
underpinnings creak as the cars go clacking 

It’s Thursday and you are alive,
you are at a sidewalk café
anywhere in the world

Like the old phoenix which, the more it got
Burnt up, (recycling its own stuff, no doubt,
For it did not burn down) the more it grew—