Banned for Life from the Artists' Colony
You want to write. You want to write. Tonight a sharp breeze from the river or elsewhere. The trains run later than expected, column of low whistle parting clouds, and this new place is on a flight path so the lights lope in triads above your kitchen window, blinking, bound for coasts. Midnight, the usual sounds. When he met you, he gathered you up in hug. Where from the folds of his impossible pants—someone would vote him best dressed this week, a joke, you never could see his shoes, cuffs like moon boots, waist held up with string, head shaven, alien—from where did he rise, springing weed, born through the pleats of cotton duck to greet you? Only later the stories reach you. He can’t come back. He drank so much one night, he stole a dozen saucers from the kitchen, spilled a pool within every rim, left them under the beds of women. When does your life stop being your life? The trains, the air—nothing’s a distraction. He must have balanced the plates on each arm, walking through moonlessness, white shirted and singing.
