To Siddhartha, While Going to the Gym
It’s so early even the traffic lights are dim.
The midnight hunters slink home fed.
Parking is easy. Those provided for
are just now tumbling out of bed.
I watch him hang his office shirt
on the peg provided by the gym.
I do not always work out at this hour,
but when I do it’s because of him.
He firms the hanger, rubs the creases flat,
seems not to notice where he goes I go.
We speak. The weather’s this; our team is that.
Do you know the restaurant I know?
When he’s out on the weight room floor
I gather the white shirt to my face.
One gesture, I whisper, one syllable
might quench the fire. . . a brief embrace. . . .
Here is another way to look at it:
the origin of suffering is denial.
To deny is to necessitate.
Let that sink in. Let that resonate.
On Surviving a Lecture on Foucault
I bet the
kind-of-attractive, slender, bald guy in the slides
had something else in mind.
I bet he
would tell you there comes a time
to set the dissertation aside, to realize
the French are always, to some degree, putting you on.
In the lecture hall
your upraised, inadvertent jazz-hands catch the light
of the lectern lamp.
You have said "relativize" eleven times.
While you go on
about the mirrors reflecting mirrors,
the sacred truth of the cotton-candy life,
the hard earth gives up hellebore, the stone,
the red camellia by the library wall, shedding scarlet
and taking scarlet on, like a girl dancing in red
on the first day anybody wears red.
Keep looking the wrong way, friend.
At the mirror where the red dress passed.
Some of the gods would stab you where you stand.
