where many a thought is brought to decision.
i shake this man around,
await an answer to plagiarize pure wisdom,
with shifty intuition.
become a man in a suit by a municipal building?
face reflected in an office window?
all the time checking to make sure my life is paying.
i was looking through a scrapbook,
souvenir rocks and political buttons,
my first girlfriend in the nude,
and six million bloody crisp Jews,
staring at me, yelping and saying:
"you were born one and you will die one."
it may be true.
i was looking through a scrapbook
at twenty pages stuck together,
events in the past,
with an empty book awaiting me.
just had to look back through,
what had already occurred,
while my life kept turning.
came the day when prominance and peace,
in my airy character,
were swallowed in dread thought of review.
i found myself grabbing,
at what i had left behind,
in search of an error i might have made,
a neglected thought that led me here,
thrown into this fearful circumstance.
though i bled all over, i found no help,
from those who i had called helpless.
i asked for confirmation,
from those i had called blind,
then could not be bothered by their answers.
went to those accepted peers,
but they echoed the advice i had given.
conjured idols once respected,
with a growing need for memories,
sufficient, i thought, to bring me around,
brought back to sell my past,
a step backward unacceptable.
so i mocked and belittled them,
to catapult from their circle,
and again be the envy of all i see.
i was looking through my scrapbook.
saw souvenir rocks and political buttons,
my first girlfriend in the nude,
i beheld an oven, topped with a steaming kettle,
as the scrapbook's spine was broken,
"here is the key forgotten."
its back turned limp, fell loose,
and twenty pages melted apart.
from Scrapbook
new york city
august 12,1974
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