Last Turn of the Morning Carousel Forever Turn the Midnight Carousel Birthday Poem For Merry

Am I just another antiquity An artist who finds a natural home Among the paupers whose graves are marked with serial numbers Instead of headstones? I hate gimmicks and dismiss them Like any other moment of mediocrity. The truth is that I have no problem With standing among broken things (Which have lost their lacquer Along with most of the pigment Born of memory.) Memories And the past are bombed out cities With many blind allies And dead ends Along with the hustlers of our wishful thinking Who makes everything we recall as unreliable as the New York Post. So why do we rely on this memory Or anything else which is expedient with its answers? You should know I live Just on the outskirts of any post war city of memory. For that’s the last place I can find you Still smiling in rare moments of being among Friends without pretense And those who you feel no need to hide the fits And fury which you breath has the recoil of a gun. And you use that wind to start another Devastating inner storm, Fragile as a little girl on moment Then Fierce as the wards the next. I would like to take the gun that has been pressed against your heart since you were 16 and turn it onto the demons that you hunted to escape with pills and boy finds and expedited answers from Long Island gurus so perhaps we can live ordinary lives with ordinary fears of everyday things. Perhaps we can write letters of discontent to the New York Times Or find a home in banality. You should have known that I’ve Grown tired of keeping company with artists. Their conversations And their letters have become fatally urgent Crying about the end of this long running party We know as civilization. Oh how I would love to spend one more afternoon in bed with you Watching TV or listening to music. I could hold you again And you could think of my arms as a beach Emptied of all the people So you could skinny dip the in welcoming waters freely. And the waves could wash away South Oaks and Pilgrim into a feverish dream of straps on the bed and clocks that announce med time. Kept you around I’d always keep a pot on for you. I’d love to have taken a candle To burn away that mark That no x ray would ever find. Who knew that its roots Could reach so far beyond your years Keeping your most vile anxieties Alive And well. Or intertwine Your words Your phrases which you have sculpted into tiny ships To sail you Away from here. Did those roots Drag you into those Mornings which came too soon While waiting for the promises of a midnight Which never came at all. If only you didn’t follow those demons to the rope’s end Then perhaps the candle I’ll light for you tomorrow wouldn’t burn all night Your breath could have taken care of that. But what remains guaranteed the last turn of the morning carousel And forever turns the midnight carousel.