Poetry 365

One fine day,
open as cut lips,
more than alive—asleep and beaten powerless
you and I
like students evacuating
a burning high school
then lying flat like a drunken one next to the old boiler
in a T-shirt consumed by snow
when us the janitor awakens
we shall be
heated like dead languages after school
safe still, exempt on the illegal floor
in the high observatory
we will pardon the imbeciles
as clear as intelligible
hardly have time for the brain that kills, bravo
then walking back to school, resolved
under the branches flinging marks
the snow is more than alive, it is asleep
in the little nit-brown street
infamous as sleet as the day repeats
Look at yourself! Look at yourself! That’s why I’m driving you away
With my infra-red powerful ray
In the absence of a sphere of Lucky Socrates!
Lucky Socrates!
Almost too seriously, and frighteningly, oh sleep.