"Paused at the edge of the tub, turning away
wanting to be seen, morning apartment
where the light has lost its yellow
at the moment of the sign.
Turns away wants to be seen.
Just then you turned to look --
a sweetness with a hook on either end.
Surely it is the century of clouds?
A long walk across town and your social realist overcoat
turned up: citizens yawning on the passing train.
The train windows blurring past like movie frames
run sideways starring our exhausted revolutionary
sweetheart whose head cracks open to swallow the day.
We have made the world flat once again.
Meetings in the cold warehouse on the outskirts of the Year
Zero.
In the red suburbs of the Year Zero.
In the other night on the other side of permission
you could have her or a police car on fire
if you preferred the second you wore a black square
on your jacket or in your hair.
The machine flower the machine music
blotted out all other sounds still
you could not get it loud enough.
Needs to know looks back.
Wants to be seen turns away.
Had meant to write the century of crowds.
And beneath it the gear rooms of the calendar
where tiny cracks have been discovered in every hour time
is starting to trickle staunched with grease and sweat a shudder
a sadness at waking.
Now must begin again it must be new time.
In the morning of the sign lying in bed in cold Utopia
and alone under the black square.
Your ears swelled with flowers a corpse in your mouth.
You are free though a freedom with its ribs showing.