Now I'm going to read a group of three poems.
They don't precisely fit together.
But I think of them as belonging together.
The first to come from riding buses.
Not city buses, but buses out in the countryside.
And the third seems to me in a similar style anyway.
I rode the bus today from Phoenix over here
and tried to keep my eyes open in case I saw something.
But it was very pretty.
I don't mean that.
But in case I saw something, I might
be able to write about since buses seemed
to me very good for producing poems
and much better than airplanes.
But I fell asleep and didn't even dream.
So no poem today.
Anyway, the first is called Unflushed Urinals.
And the lines were written in the Omaha bus station.
But I suppose might have been written in many bus
stations in this country.
Seeing them, that is the unpledged urinals.
Seeing them, I recognize the contempt
some men have for themselves.
This man, for instance, zipping quickly up head
turned like a bystander innocent of his own piss.
And here comes one to repair himself with the mirror,
padding down damp sparse hairs suspiciously still black.
Poor bantam cock of a man jaunty at 1:00 AM perfumed
undiscourageable.
Oh, the saintly forbearance of these mirrors.
The acceptingness of the wash bowls
in which we absolve ourselves.