I watched a young woman
and in a shawl she
sat for two days
dusk until dawn
motionless and
teetering on the edge
of a busy Nairobi intersection,
I waited from the hotel window.
for two days

I took a hot bath
on the equator
thinking
about the british girl
upstairs
her perfect white teeth
and
'should I see them again, or
would she see me again?'
while I watched

I wonder that the ticks
in the plumage of a soaring bird
embedded in the skin;
clinging and huddled,
know they soar;
do they
watch the sun, or
see the momentary countryside

Sweet and Sour

Rigid, sitting in a dimly lit stool.
A thick hazy fog lingers and circles
hundreds of bodies barely visible as
they gyrate and mingle in a mess of

He died today,
At the Hollywood year of 28
The pills sprinkled on him like snowflakes
Never melted
They lay with him as naked as he was;
Waiting for a SoHo massage
That never quite came.

Cashmere Hilltops

Cashmere hilltops on the horizon
the landscape of my bedspread,
riddled
not with rose petals but Frito-Lays chips

and a candle drips in a straight line

Tomorrow

tomorrow –
a day
where the few only matter
and all matters left to the few;
where leaders know
their choice cuts of meat
more intimately than their people

I have the chemistry to flow down river –
we all do, for the right cent.
Formulas to stay the course
to zeal