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?