The Twenty-Five

The Twenty-Five

The narrative hurries
till our cheeks slump down
like panhandlers do holding money their cans;
and our eyes drag their memories behind them:

breathing heavier walking the stairs;
eating less, sleeping less,
the narrative hurries.

An old man said to me while watching the stars,
“I trust you think these look the same to you as to me,”
and I said, “I don’t see why not,”
and he said, “of course you don’t;”
and then a pretty girl walked by and I said watching her,
“I trust you think she looks the same to you as to me”
and he said, “she doesn’t.”

In a graveyard, near a newborn plot burial,
grows a patch of four leaf clovers;
In a nursing home there is a perverted joke
about suckling babes.

the narrative hurries
like virgins hurry
and jokes hurry
and poems hurry.

now you can stick me in the gum-ball machine,
now you can count as high as me in Spanish;
I am a convenient percentage,
I am an adjective to the century.

I am a narrative
a narrative
a narrative that hurries.