I lose my flip-flops in the restaurant.
Come home -- bare feet dirty.
When I open the door, there’s a shiny new bathroom
(unexpected) on the first floor of my building.
Some guy I never met says: “Feel free to shower.
“Thanks. Maybe another time.”
“Who’s that?” I say to Jerome upstairs.
“They just moved in and they worship the earth,” he says.
“They gain all their power by laying face down
in the dirt for hours on end.”
“Oh.” Turns out I know two poets who also do that.
But a third warns me not to get involved –
that they’re kind of skeezey.
Sydney Greenstreet’s waddle.
Peter Lorre’s perm.
Mary Astor’s ruffled collar.
Humphrey Bogart’s rat-a-tat-tat
staccato summation
and impassioned refusal to bend:
“I won’t because everything in me wants to --
and you counted on that.”
I tell you, I won’t!
C’mon, you can walk a mile
in fifteen minutes – one-legged.
Now get going.
