A Talk with My Neighbor

1.

Standing on broken bits of glass and the muttering plastic bags that tatter our lot,

He earnestly catalogs for me the way those ancient, naïve, homeless Jews

Mixed their religion and their laws with the neighbors’ gods,

Swirling, like inept bartenders, suicide drinks

Of all the whiskey and jello and umbrellas they could reach.

2.

Cool marble busts of heroic minds

Order themselves in comely lines:

Aristotle unblinks at Socrates. He nods

To the unflinching strength of Plato’s jaw,

And Nietzsche unclenches for a moment to confer

With Bertrand and Kant – Lurking in a corner,

The insane cousin, not born to be seen,

Serves up the dinner plates, grinning, obscene.

3.

Praise to the healthy clean march of mankind!

Pure motive, strong body, and sound of mind,

Matchless in brilliance: 6 – 8 – 10 abreast,

Cadencing forward, sweet Reason goosesteps;

Bring tithes and offerings to curbs and straight sidewalks,

Conquer frailty block by irrevocable block.

4.

“I know what you’re thinking,”

My friend says, wearied and weighted down

By the beads of his Rosary for The New Man,

 Mouthed over and over on doubtful nights,

To wake with it tighter about the neck;

“How do we know that wisdom is, in fact,

The highest good; Or what’s good at all?

It bothers me too,

And I haven’t resolved it.”

He fingers the goodness of man, worn thin,

And stares at the garbage cans.

I listen.

5.

I am listening, also, in my mind,

To a moment when all the green grass in a horse pasture

Where I was lying bowed over me, singing with wind,

And the sun burned over me stronger than I

Could ever know or be, and the

Wideness of all the world was a ghost

Of what is, and a whisper of Him.

6.

We walk to the 7-11 down the block

To wash down our philosophical talk

With Slurpees, and pass

A stubbled bum, who stumbles on a crack

And curses the sidewalk;

“What about me?” he slurs and reeks,

“Wha’abou’ me?” – not drunk, just crazy,

He reels like an earthquake,

Cracked as a plate, and

Gauche as a weed

In the concrete.