A Miser[l]y Mash...Two, Three Things to Accompany Your Travels

Swaying, the Apt Traveler
Exited My House By John Ashbery

It is so easy to be attractive when
you're young, even if not particularly favored by nature,
even if nerdy, spotted, and pacific,
even in the wrong clothes, rumpled with anxiety
like a maze, even without interests
from the wrong side of the street.

Standing with one's bother,
wiping off the strictures of dark, demented doubt,
one believes what one lives in.
The air freshens the rooms.

I float from the dormer down
to the brick path darkened by the lawn sprinkler.
It seems I was inside once.
Oh I'm careless to tell the advantage of that pact
with truth I made as I undress.
The truth is it would have gotten to me
after five or six seasons of that sort of thing.
But it wasn't to be. Baby blushed anew at the air's demands,
and the pine tree fell over on the back porch, causing it to cave in.
That wasn't in my list of grievances though.
In fact there was never any list;
I coped by coping, living out life shred by shred
until a magma caught up with me. In the broken alley
one passed strollers and people pushing them. One comet caught my
eye
but it was too late, too late to praise she always says.
My pants were wet
and someone is coming up the road, some zombie
or other.
This tune I never asked for
is a different one, a furious clarion
shrilling a hornet's nest of replies.
The others will be older, other rapists
than the ones that were put down.

It would be time to plan an escape.
This is difficult in a hotel.
There are bands of bullies waiting to frisk
you, and on the esplanade the scenario doesn't get much better.
Even the little girl with the balloon is planning to annex half of
Western civilization,
and the ticket-of-leave man has his eye on the colored bastions
we plummet over, seeking release in the sea, the sea!
Two dolphins like two colons in a sentence
are rinsing me now,
pouring me out of myself.
I feel as though I'll never be big enough
to efface scars as an adult ideally should--
wait, though! I'm coming to the corner where
pockets of jasmine and lavender inhale--
Be my scope limited, it's something
just to have been in the intimacy of all the stories
down the stairway to where it ends, to have worn
linen and passed as a man in suits.
I'll tell you that one too
though you don't want to hear it,
though it's as old as the hills,
though displeasure is now rage, I'll canvass
for funds for it, not giving up,
not showing myself up this time,
too close to Mother and the difficult calm,
to the overextended fruit of this day,
this dream.

OASIS MALADE
Tanith dropped by today.
Like, I hadn't seen her in years,
But there she was at my front door
In her colonial helmet.

Custom made Burmese fan
Poised in one hand...
Ready to swipe at any passing disease-ridden mosquito.

She'd been in Belgium, she told me...
Studying the pyramids.
It took her years to find out
That there were no pyramids in Belgium.

I asked her why she left me so suddenly...
Why she'd been silent for so long.

Didn't I exist for her? Didn't we have something, well, special?

She asked me for tea in a plastic cup
With a well-fitting lid...Then she left.

PRITHEE
You make the sun shine...
Keep me warm at night.
Sometimes,
You are my guiding light.

When I'm weak or desperate,
You'll stretch out your hand...

It's a hand that offers courage...
It's a hand that calms me down...
And leads me to a land
That we discovered countless lives ago.

Still young enough to change this wicked world...
So tell me, Angel, where to now ?

Shall we chase rainbows?
Ride the stars by night?

Stay close...
Be my second sight...

Show me our tomorrows'
Cause I can't dream alone...

Shall we chase rainbows?
Ride the stars by night?

Stay close...
Be my second sight...

Show me our tomorrows'
Cause I can't dream alone...