Anatomy of a Dress

I write you to air these few thoughts feelings you are
most likely driving around the city in your little car
breathing in the exquisite air of the city and the exhaust fumes
dust and other
which make it up only hold on awhile there will be time
for other decisions but now I want to concentrate on this
image of you secure and projected how I imagine you
because you are this way where are you you are in my thoughts

Something in me was damaged I don’t know how or by what
today is suddenly broad and a whole new era of uncertainties is
ending
like World War I or the twenties it keeps ending this is the
beginning
of music afterward and refreshments all kinds of simple
delicacies
That toast the heart and create a rival ambiance of cordiality
to the formal one we are keeping up in our hearts the same
What with the skyscrapers and dirigibles and balloons in the sky
seems pretty crowded
and a nice place to live at least I think so do you
and the songs strike up there are chorales everywhere so pretty
it’s lovely
and everywhere the truth rushes in to fill the gaps left by
its sudden demise so that a fairly accurate record of its activity
is possible
If there were sex in friendship this would be the place to have it
right here on this floor
with bells ringing and loud music pealing

Perhaps another day one will want to review all this
for today it looks compressed like lines packed together
in one of those pictures you reflect with a polished tube
I feel it in the lean reaches of the weather and the wind
that sweeps articulately down these drab streets
bringing everything to a high gloss

Yet we are alone too that’s sad isn’t it
yet you are meant to be alone at least part of the time
You must be in order to work and yet it always seems so
unnatural
as though seeing people were intrinsic to life which it just
might be
and then somehow the loneliness is more real and more
human
You know not just the scarecrow but the whole landscape
and the crows peacefully pecking where the harrow has passed

John Ashbery