The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.

When evening quickens faintly in the street,
Wakening the appetites of life in some
And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,
I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,
If the street were time and he at the end of the street,
And I say, ‘Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript.’

La Rochefoucauld dit, Madame,
Qu'on ne doit pas parler de soi,
Ni ?.. ni ?.. de ?.. de ?.. sa ?.. sa ?.. sa femme.
Alors, ma conduite est infâme,
Voyez, je ne fais que ça, moi.

Je me moque de sa maxime.
Comme un fœtus dans un bocal,
J'enferme mon « moi » dans ma rime,
Ce bon « moi » dont me fait un crime
Le sévère Blaise Pascal.

Or, ce ne serait rien encore,
On excuse un... maudit travers ;
Mais j'enferme Toi que j'adore
Sur l'autel que mon souffle dore
Au Temple bâti par mes vers ;

Sous les plafonds de mon Poème,
Sur mes tapis égyptiens,
Dans des flots d'encens, moi qui T'aime,
Je me couche auprès de Toi-même
Comme auprès du Sphinx des Anciens ;

Tel qu'un Faust prenant pour fétiche
L'un des coins brodés de tes bas,
Je Te suis dans chaque hémistiche
Où Tu bondis comme une biche,
La Biche-Femme des Sabbats ;

Comme pour la Sibylle à Cumes,
Mon quatrain Te sert de trépied,
Où, dans un vacarme d'enclumes,
Je m'abattrai, couvert d'écumes,
Pour baiser le bout de ton pied ;

À chaque endroit de la césure,
D'un bout de rythme à l'autre bout,
Tu règnes avec grâce et sûre
De remplir toute la mesure,
Assise, couchée, ou debout.

Eh, bien ! j'ai tort, je le confesse :
On doit, jaloux de sa maison,
N'en parler pas plus qu'à la messe ;
Maxime pleine de sagesse !
J'ai tort, sans doute... et j'ai raison.

Si ma raison est peu touchante,
C'est que mon tort n'est qu'apparent :
Je ne parle pas, moi, je chante ;
Comme aux jours d'Orphée ou du Dante,
Je chante, c'est bien différent.

Je ne parle pas, moi, Madame.
Vous voyez que je n'ai pas tort,
Je ne parle pas de ma femme,
Je la chante et je clame, clame,
Je clame haut, sans crier fort.

Je clame et vous chante à voix haute.
Qu'il plaise aux cœurs de m'épier,
Lequel pourra me prendre en faute ?
Je ne compte pas sans mon hôte,
J'écris « ne vends » sur ce papier.

J'écris à peine, je crayonne.
Je le répète encor plus haut,
Je chante et votre Âme rayonne.
Comme les lyres, je résonne,
Oui... d'après La Rochefoucauld.

Ah ! Monsieur !.. le duc que vous êtes,
Dont la France peut se vanter,
Fait très bien tout ce que vous faites ;
Il dit aux femmes des poètes :
« Libre aux vôtres de vous chanter !

Dès qu'il ne s'agit plus de prose,
Qu'il ne s'agit plus des humains,
Au Mont où croît le Laurier-Rose,
Qu'on chante l'une ou l'autre chose,
Pour moi, je m'en lave les mains. »

Donc, sans épater les usages,
Je ferai, Madame, sur Vous
Dix volumes de six cents pages,
Que je destine... pas aux sages,
Tous moins amoureux que les fous.

Pour terminer, une remarque,
(Si j'ose descendre à ce ton,
Madame), après, je me rembarque,
Et je vais relire Plutarque
Dans le quartier du Panthéon :

Sans la poésie et sa flamme,
(Que Vous avez, bien entendu)
Aucun mortel, je le proclame,
N'aurait jamais connu votre âme,
Rose duParadis Perdu ;

Oui, personne, dans les Deux-Mondes,
N'aurait jamais rien su de Toi.
Sans ces... marionnettes rondes,
Les Vers bruns et les Rimes blondes,
Mais, oui, Madame, excepté moi.

On the balcony,
It's pseudo-social housing,
Nothing fancy.
So I'm on the balcony,
And there's this beetle, this little beetle
And it's either high with me
Or dying with me
Just kinda flying into the ground and sorta sliding around on its head
On the still sunlit concrete.
It stops. On its back, legs flailing in the
nothingness. It rights itself.
It's sat still (well, not really sitting; it's a beetle.
but I imagine it would want to be sitting. I'm sitting).
There's a lightning bolt urge to crush its tiny carapace,
Just as quickly dashed away.
I take my last drag.
We watch the setting sun a while.
Spring is beginning to warm.
I leave the beetle to its business and go inside.
Escapes won't save me;
How terrified I am.

Last night there was a spider
Floating down from the bathroom ceiling
Tethered by an invisible silk thread
On a backdrop of powerful yellow made dingy by the incandescent light.
It was so graceful.
It looked like it was falling in slow motion.
I went to the kitchen and got a plastic cup, and came back to the spider,
Scooped it out of the air carefully, catching the thread,
Went to the living room and threw it out the balcony door,
onto the then dark concrete
(I didn't see if the beetle was still there, I didn't think to look,
I didn't care, but I assume not).
So today I was volunteering in a bookstore
(I remind myself of that old saying: charity is the pastime of those who don't care)
And as I came down the stairs
(upstairs is sorting, downstairs is selling)
There in front of me, evental,
my whole horizon, centred, unexpected:
A familiar form that had forcedly been forgotten
And an all too familiar sensation,
a chest-tightening-heart-drumming
terror
as if thunder thundered just behind my head,
Zeus piercing my heart,
His claim:
A woman who works in the coffee shop
Who a few months ago I asked out
(not the coffee shop, they don't pay their taxes)
Who has a boyfriend who would say he has her.
I think my disdain for chauvinism and possessional language
still arise from motivations chauvinistic and possessive;
I have not outgrown the oppressors in me.

La Rochefoucauld once put it: 'there are some people who would never have fallen in love
if they hadn't heard there was such a thing.'
I'm one of those people, or at least it was wanted.

We had only really spoken on that one occasion
(not me and La Rochefoucauld, he's dead; the barista)  
and briefly on that one other occasion
other than those service-consumer paradigmatic motions and incantations
In the practico-inerte, or beings-in-themselves, alienated, i don't know.
But really, it hurts to be reminded.
She hadn't yet seen me.
I had absolutely no idea what to do for a few seconds.
I say hi and timidly waddle toward her
And at first she doesn't seem to notice, but then is like, hey.
The awkwardness is peppered with short exchanges of information
And smiles that remind my soul it's alive.
I'll skip my failures in making conversation:
Turns out she draws. An artist. The knife twisting.
She's not into politics though
As if that somehow changes things.
I buy a pile of books. We leave the shop.
We're walking the same way a while.
I'm dying here but above the clouds.
She says it's nice that it's warm when she comes out of work now.
I say something weird about spring.
The laugh says it all. Baudelaire said it all:
when you walk, you dance, when you speak, you sing.
(he's dead too)
I asked if there is a lost and found at the coffee shop: there is:
I intend to retrieve a gross lame letter I wrote her
that one time I broke the symbolic order,
to my shame and undisclosed superego humiliation
(an all too familiar sensation).
Am I in the age of guilt? Was I transubstantiatiated? And hell? Pardon the details too many and too few.
The short walk had filled me with such energy
to prevent me being sad when we parted.
Back on the balcony, in another sinking sunlight
The spider scurries out of sight,
And I can see a glimmering web built onto the vertical bars.

A true friend is one who sticks to you through thick or thin unconditionally. Someone you can always bank upon even in the times of adversities. They are often your best critics just for the sake of your own betterment. They don’t mind being right in your face and telling you where are you actually going wrong. In the words of Francois de La Rochefoucauld, “A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.” A true friend loves you for what you are and not what you ought to be. A true friend should always be cherished. A true friend knows you in and out and is always there to back you even while you are up against the odds. According to William Penn, “A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.”