Victim of Fortuitousness

 

Old man lets machine run down.

Monkey sits and stares, tin cup dangling

like a spare appendage; you

in the passing crowd

wonder if it will ever get filled.

Music like an insecurely closed faucet

drips down to the sidewalk, fills innumerable cracks,

loses itself in an underworld

beneath the repeated battering

of a thousand feet.

If you let that organ grind

its way into your heart

you (frozen to immobility) won’t ever get home.

A staccato barrage of musical notes,

sharp, pointed, flung like projectiles

from narrow slits in a fortress wall;

it may be impossible to determine who has fired what, or why.

Or, for whom they are intended.

You, too, could be a victim of fortuitousness.

Let us therefore hope for a wind, like our ancient Electrolux,

which will sweep the dust

from last year’s relationships.

Bag it and forget;

forget the impoverishment it engendered.

For six months we have not thrown

him a dime. Who are we

to ask for handouts?

 

Return