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bex box : poetry : assorted tales
Assorted Tales to be Told After Sixty



Somewhere
the wind is whipping
past fifth avenue

turning
down main

unbuttoning the man
who will tell
three stories
at lightening speed

for five bucks
or some change
or whatever you can spare,

time,
if that's all you can afford.

Jeremy
just broke
his e string again,
the third time this month

and after eight hours
of practice every day

he says the stories
are collecting in his head,
moving down his spine,
coughing loudly in the next room,
interrupting his sleep at night.

He's got no time to hear a man,
he's sure of this.

I'm not so sure of anything.


1996,
Mexico City Blues for the Devil
and others
who don't know a goddamn thing about life.


Andrea and I
have stepped into something.

Quivering like worms on a fishhook,
we are watching daylight die
through the entrance of a cave,
listening to the sounds
of two people: a high-pitched girlie girl
and her baritone enthusiast.

They see us listening deep,
controlling the giggle
silently adding to the collection of
"When We Were Young and Life Was Good."
stories to be told, only after 60,
within the safe confines
of a nursing home lobby.

It is night
and the silence is deafening,
moving through the woods,
leaving.

Eight hours, nothing said.
The rumbling of lovers 50 feet below.
Claustrophobics crawling into rocks.
Hands snaking on cool wet walls;

We are living,
collecting the moments,
living.

And it's like this:
slow dark wonderful,
comfortable, like a mother's lap
memorable, like five o'clock shadow
bleeding through the face
of a man
who thinks the world owes him,
owes him big,
will keep owing him until the day
he is no longer able to collect.

(he says broken e strings are only the beginning in a lifetime of wrongs.)

But we are living,
absorbing the details,
living and
the world doesn't owe us a thing.

This, I'm sure of.

Someday the wind will whip
past fifth avenue
turn down main

stop at the elbow

and unbutton the girl
who will tell three stories
at lightening speed
for five bucks
or some change,

whatever you can spare,
a little bit of time
if that's all you can afford.