actualizing the 'evening' answer
to The Riddle of the Sphinx


     *


what I heard was not what was being said


     *



he'd spit in his own Pepsi, if you ask for a sip


     *


aisle seat for the sorrowful ballet


     *


not in the script, the gull that flew past the bay window


     *


my incessant blathering wore out 
her hammer, anvil and that other bone
I can never remember


     *


limping toward unknown archipelagos
with a notebook and two childhood prayers


     *


brown blood in the hambone
and the first-class relic


     *


words everywhere, the oceanic fears of the illiterate


     *


maybe Gutei just needed a minute to think


     *


he's where it widens and slows with Sarah Vaughan


     *


it's hard to be alone in the hereafter