in a crowded museum i will find my self in love
or in a dark cinema house empty in its
noonday run, in that stillness before things unreel

before the trailers and the credits roll
a phenomenon in this shady life where
we edge closer ever closer to a sour oblivion

by the telephone that seldom rings
except for robot solicitations or duns
automatically summoning us from torpor

in this dust-ridden room where the window
pane is hot enough to blister the palms
where the paintings stain and sting our eyes

perhaps by then we will fix up the house,
the car, our lives/eliminate the innuendoes
implications and inferences. perhaps

we will become ourselves--unbearably

hot and trembling with pronounced need
groping through generations of wishes
trembling and sincere in our nakedness

perhaps