Borrowed End

tell me when i’m fog     and
almost established as a physical logger-shirted grandfather
walking the whole street’s ethereal liquids
on a leash down telegraph avenue
	into the mirror brushed up against itself
	over and over into what you’d guess to be infinity
	one image for each year     all the years you’ve wandered
	the park still asleep in its delusion and the only light
	a candle settled on a borrowed end table
	that’s been in this house since the 1890’s

be a long night     duffle bag over his shoulder
and you can decant a noir movie or a nineteenth century
and its lethal fogs     hey sailor     long decade this night
with the killer lawn gnome on this northbound bus
the hippie sidewalks     punk traffic lanes
center line in the night’s invisibility of blacktop
my fingers still walk warhol’s new york city
as the bus goes further into temporal inscrutability
and cars blur around memory a familiar fog
	in the mirror there you can see the legends
	getting smaller no matter how well you
	remember them in the candle light
		is that a tie dye or a toga
		a periwig or do they know
		how to cure and dye animal skins yet
			this new borrowed time’s in his duffle too
			as the warm light flows his course
			across the range of the mirror
            
            
            
            

from Yew Nork (2014)