which caress your veins as you sleep
nude through the afternoon.  Lost prophets
of air-conditioned apartments blow didactic
spewings more Barbary Coast than brimstone....

As I fizzled like a square in your ashtray,
I thought of the sage at his microscope,
his piety heartless, efficient, iconoclastic.
It’s all smoke and semaphore until the weight

hits the bottom.  If there is no river,
why build a bridge?  My daydreams are gazelles
hunted by smokestacks, and you are a valley
of benedictions, penicillin, and apple pie.