and so break the seal of  another day

i used to eat the 4 a.m. despair

the computer has already ruined this moment but let me persist in it



sit here now and no hope of getting through to you

the hush of the night trucks moving past

sober now there is no pretend to do

you can write to fend off the past



saw her face from when we were 18 not in a dream this time, just waking, just lying awake, outside the blue fuzz that is night and the future that awaits or that is happening depending on your notion of destiny. then I creep quietly from your side, filch a tshirt from the bureau drawer, and move downstairs to liftweights at 4 a.m. trying the new. I wish it seemed old, wish I had that equity.



but i was telling you about the face of Delia from when we were 18 and how I saw her pale arch eyebrows hair brown so black but amber in October sun and her almond eyes hard black almonds, her cackle laugh and flattened vowels, the lisp of Chicago, all this back in 1990 when we were kids and the world felt safe



yes, I mean you didn't worry about getting blown up so much or witnessing the blowing (OK City was a foretaste, later)

but when I say safe I mean for instance I personally hadn't yet a clear conception, say, of the venality of New York City. And I mean the denizens



so, there I am, really an instant ago, trucks hush by, blue fuzz of night, your warm hair

next to my chest, but I am picturing Delia, from when we were 18, thinking off all the past

but no sense of loss; then as always I think of walking from the Mall, with Delia, the blue snow falling, we go through the field out by 45, her warm, our black coats, mittens, we felt pure as Indians



so there is the poem, as I thought, but then I thought no why can't I make them short stories and novels

crafted not in some precious college way but in the way I would craft them as I would craft them

and of course this, this no poem either, this just this, what you write at 5:23 a.m. when you get up thinking that you're not gonna stop drinking but that you have to control it or perish huh I mean or it will control youso be cool and dial down the ratio, Mammon, serve sobriety for the better tenth of the days



ah this isn't it at all this isn't what I'm going for at all

I wish I could just sit here and tell you all this now for as long as I felt like it reallyman

but here is the urgency pinching down and now I must leave you ah the day's sealed



but not dwindling. nothing dwindles.

so whatif that's a lie. I will talk to you

again