Perambulations in the dawn 
Through long cold silent empty streets 
Bring him to the frozen playground 

I perched curious as a little bird on the windowsill
between the Age of Enlightenment
and the age of thirty. Disappointment scuttled

That’s a hot dog with fried onions 
(the kind that come in a can) and stripes 
of brown mustard and mayo. We each 

The beach is a balance oscillating
in the sunlight, it is a see-saw
  our town gleams on.

To feel you knock
your radishy
fist against the wall

Split a rental house in Hackensack
with two friends—fellow painters (Judy
and Stu? Suze and Elwood?) who

This tree keeps falling over. I prop it up,
it falls again. And the rain falls
day after day like a broken wet record.

I hate the quiet, green suburban hills
of Scythia, and all the new-built houses,
all alike, around which children play

Bolinas, I was near there once, 
but that was years ago

               I was given the Earth

I walk around with no ideals or goals. I pass ripe blackberry bushes.

There’s a man in me who would prove. He is right but little else. My knowledge of people was built up somewhere else. It was a heavy-handed preparation and it dies hard.

I blew money. I lost things. I got over the loud thing for awhile. Loud or quiet is about the same. It means you don’t have anything to come on to people with. And you have to give up first.