BOSTON, 1968

On the Charles
without a Kennedy dollar
at the fuzzy piano bar
in a Back Bay suite
waiting for uncertain flesh
by feckless shore leaves
from Nam
Vets treated as
Jamesian ghosts
returning home
blowing away secrets
as in a penumbra of clouds
by C.I.A. operatives
disguised by plastic surgery
by Macnamara's band
of brothers
at the Kennedy School
crawling away
from independence
and raging against
the adolescence
when we ran out
of popular music
as beggars emerge
from underground tunnels
taking a lesson
from Jane Fonda
by the mother wind
in self same mirrors
silences smell
of war,visages
of villages
ineffable bombs
writing to moms
in metamorphic pastiche
between a crease
of a century
where four seasoned
refugees hide in trains
with foreign bodies
of expatriate existence
fleeing parental storms
of daily nightmares
of c.b.s body counts
among walking bankruptcies
of the deafened 1940's
with the Dulles bros.
of Church and State
helping rearm
the Nazi revanchists
in the bleakest of horoscopes
on transit in locution
of the final solution
with interest
of horizontal ruin
in time at high noon
amid Dorothy Killgalen's voice
with death coming
to her flesh
in human memory
of the dead Kennedys'
your insides fall
from disinfectant days
in dust baths
of new cable visions
flowers die from pollution
bloodshot in solitary rooms
your bed fills with dominoes
instinct pushes
out the war fever
self flogging on brutal Sundays.