This 12 X 18 room

where I spend my days

and nights caught in

the habits of ghosts

the yellow room

with the rollaway bed

and the card table

of paperbacks, a

transistor radio and

a copy of Good News

for Modern Man

no different now

except the window's

larger and the plaster

swirls are grey like

suicide winter

the year spent tapping

keys and washing dishes

reading Giants in the Earth 
and  Liturgies of the Western Church,

taking photographs of

Asylum Lake, the long

walk behind the paper mills,

snowflakes smelling like

the dead river

look, brother, we're not

the revolutionaries we

hoped, it's all disco and

glitter glam and Jesus

catching the the Greyhound

to Ann Arbor, dipping

sardines in ketchup

and passing Old Crow

the proselyte pan handling

in Candy Cane Lane eating

dogpiss snow to heal his

broken teeth, the city's Dutch

Reformed swilling fondue,

Swedish meatballs, and

marshmallow jello

Sunday morning in this

room, behind distorted

glass, like ice fishing

with mealy worms,

a plate of cold toast and

margarine, Taster's Choice

crystals, the dream again

of reading in the dark,

reading in the dark!

eyes penetrating the

unfathomable pages,

ancestral ghosts

loosened from the black

cages

this room I'm in now,

this one you can't see,

the one that I too cannot

see -- once again it is

torpid, unconscious

the death of the world

and you-know-who all

over again, it gets so

cramped -- I don't

want to waken in

the closet blind and

scratching the yellow

plaster, mouth groping

like a bluegill plopped

on the ice again