adding something

add something to something
and you get the price
of tomorrow's pears.

the best thing that happened today
didn't.

happy happy
inscrutable as a chinese
gong:

it's function is limitless
in new brunswick,
new jersey.

ii
anthony winchester is a
spy.

yesterday he ate his last
scrambled egg
dreaming
of setting womens underwear
on fire.

just before lunch
he caught a moneychanger
BLAM
through the temple.

iii
jesus christ
is a wholly
indistinguisable
metaphor.

says his wife never pays
the bills.

iv
twentyfour years on the same machine,
brianowsky knows everybody in the plant
including all the secretaries
and who they married
and the cars they got it in.

lived seventeen years with the same woman
but never married her.
never can tell when another
depression
'll sneak up on you.

v
there are fiftysix ways to broil hamster,
sixteen of these are illegal.
all of them are unnecessary.

vi
marshall newberm gets a relief
check twice a day.
his wife buys rachmananoff
and they eat dinner wednesday nights
on the fire escape.

marshall is fascinated
with odd numbers.  they have a daughter
who thinks she is a sieve.
oleg cassini talks about the fall
line on television, allen
ginsberg says "folks..." the
landlord demands rent
every six minutes.

vii
circe
pushes the coffee at you    you
smile at her.   she says
'you wan anything else--
huh?'           which
is her way of saying
wach it          i'm
expensive.

viii
standing on the highway
six hours, want only to say
no lady, i'm not a growth
coming out of the cement
of your imagi-
nation.

george, look at that funny hitch
hiker
in the rain rides are easy
college boys with sexual frustrations
will tell you all about it.

i rode with a guy in iowa
who thought pennsylvania was
in the deep south.  he showed
me a picture of his girl. i
worried about corky, wondered
if she made it back home ok.
prettiest dog i ever saw
in iowa.

---1967