MANHOLE POEM

Where vapor's off it's a handsome vent‑‑‑

the gentleman's got thru intrusion in the mail slit‑‑‑

tollbooth in a world under flood‑‑‑

a due for passage‑‑‑

the beast washes itself under the loop‑‑‑

cologne overwhelms the dream, so that breath is puzzled‑‑‑

to toss relieves; the peril worsens under cipher, until the scheme splinters and is set again‑‑‑

Categories are a nighttime way of getting dirty‑‑‑

the gallery is double-high‑‑‑

the air in here circles, rises when lit, drifts over hemlines and out of sleeves‑‑‑

it's day and everything's removable‑‑‑

there's a moving room‑‑‑

if his leg pains, he can remove it‑‑‑

he can shut down the shocked body, foreclose, leaving only a simple outline of a daisy sealed in a notebook‑‑‑

the shock can be bottled or jarred‑‑‑

the jar prevents the spread of fluid and influence‑‑‑

Gold-lettered tortoise comb, seen only at the station where the tolls are filed‑‑‑

if the system's remnants can achieve the comb, it becomes a certain sort of jar‑‑‑

a jar like a car which, changing lanes, does not clatter and come unscrewed but holds its form; instead of being encrypted as a sickness in the dreamer's cipher‑‑‑

where air is always venting, the speech is still going‑‑‑

a short-term chart can only hack so far‑‑‑

shuttle whizzes past and‑‑‑

the breath wafting from the cave is stirred‑‑‑

but the cave relays the hitch to the deepest wall within its system‑‑‑

the footprint of the cave is a cipher for the shock, assumes its echo as a symbol for its own desire‑‑‑

no chamber of the cave can be removed‑‑‑

everyone who lingers by the mouth is invited in‑‑‑

and worn‑‑‑

their stenciled faces gaping in the wind as the belle staggers thru her dream‑‑‑

The whole cave air could never carve itself along the border of the dream‑‑‑