Commissioner of Public Works
   

  he sold the town

  to corporate interests

  but left his legacy

  of warning signs

  on everything



   


  Our Man Downtown


  he daydreams her at the windowsill

  whose hair is like a rillet of black

  moss reflected for aster eyes


  and the predicament is whether

  abstract pointedness can sustain him

  long enough to do the job


  in a sort of harem indefinable really

  but with some definite limits

  bars on the windows and so on


  a historical curiosity perhaps yes

  but who has time enough for that

  the dialectic of the schoolmen?






  Marking Time

   

  I. poems


  Barbara’s intimations

  were as a work in fitting

  phraseology unencumberingly.


  We were outmoded, duplicated,

  washed up.  You could collect

  aeroscrap from our front yard.

  she said by the way boys

  will be boys if we let them

  but they were not boys at all

  only men all at sea



  II. gen. III. prop.


  I had loaned him my car

  as his subscription was expired

  to the magazine of transportation

  so I coasted in along the coast

  and went to work on my carburetor

  see it said my butterfly valve

  this is where we’re mixing it together

  so we eloped to the juniper stands

  out in the back of the store when

  the general proprietor and his like

  said son you see that disturbance in the dirt

  that means you got rooked well I said

  I found three ten-dollar bills where someone

  lost them on the sidewalk so

  I think I saw you coming on this deal