Escape from time

 

I flow from this book you gave

in the last of the under fifteen

minutes. Me over my head,

like a shocked reader

of those backward zeroes

printed in the purchase receipt:

in love with the lola magic

over the bridge I couldn’t pull out,

play nor call a trick to make

some obese scene consume

a page, swallow a space-

giving mystery before you

could ever figure it out.

 

Hardly a night passes I drown

in the disobedient waters of now,

for I punctuate once, twice

and almost repeatedly

so there’ll be enough seeking

and hiding between you—

who fascinate the future

and the order of falling objects

—and the narrative whose plot

contradicts the lust and laxity

of everything crepuscular.

 

There’s a kind of time feeling

the same, I don’t know what kind,

that greets 5th Avenue Street

with a stability in ways

and means you find incredible,

just as long queues

at bus terminals

are certain to re-contain motion,

such a line beginning

again and again.