Sitting on the table,
beside a half filled
coffee cup, the cat eyed
the strawberry and rhubarb tart.

Celebrate the schav
with sour cream and dill;
the carrots, leeks, and asparagus.

The bird sang above the table where
the broad blade cut through the crisp side of
brown roasted pork, rich in juice, slicing
roughly around the dark red bone.

The writing formed
stalactites and
stalagmites in
the cave. The world
was in the words.

In the prose pose of the poet
errata will be righted by machine.

I wrote through the night in long
sleeves with unbuttoned cuffs.
The morning brought farm produce and
the scent of fresh dill to the Village.

Come away from the machine.
The return carriage pulled
us across the table.

Dreams spent. In the last fiscal period,
my muse became silent then abrasive.
Moist fingers were oiled by the machine.
As keys collided, the ribbon hurried by.

Hey, look at the lines written in the psyche,
as keys pressed bare feet, old jeans, and a blue shirt
into words. The chair swerved on the fourth floor.
The body fell through the first day of summer
in its thirty third year.

Whose will escaped
the gravity
of the random
crash
as imagination
charted a course
over the landscape?

At the end of the millennium
this poet’s fingers wove words, while keys
caught. The machine, sitting on a desk,
threw lead at a ribbon that ran by
too quickly. Keys stuck in space --
As we approached the World Trade Tower’s
observation deck, Lantis said to me,
“You should feel like a part of the family
and don’t feel that you don’t belong.”

Lantis and I left Blind Milton for the year’s
longest day atop the towers, while Buck Rogers
played on tv. The words of Carl Sagan and
Albert Einstein engraved in the World Trade Tower,
looked down on Don Lev and Richard Davidson’s
summer poetry reading at South Street Seaport.
The trade of words and ink begun with letters
on Earth, were sent billions of miles as signals
of commerce . . .

Eyes sought the beginning of written language
in the commerce of the world (gifts among men and women)
and found homes erected, traded, sold, ransacked, or stolen.
The energy of giving, buying, and selling, move in time
the tensions about the wrist tapping keys, working words
while the public eye squinted at the sun.

Impression formed after many years along Bleecker,
Macdougal, West Fourth, and Greenwich Streets.
After the New School for Social Research
and New York University, words came to the page;
Washington Square moments –
drinking at the Cedar, Lions Head, and White Horse.
I sang of Greenwich Village, its traffic and life
recorded by continually moving keys in lofts,
tenements, townhouses and Fifth Avenue apartments.

the mechanical body,
in front of the tv
listens to cockatiel, parakeet,
broadcast baseball, and
telephone rings.
it grows to accept
its own time in the world.

Fingers move the machine with thought,
tapping an unedited vocabulary, and
coining words from the limns of imagination.

This is the body of poetry hesitant to meet pain;
take chances, and accept a time in the world.

Eyes, bathed in light, strained to keep up
with the words. Back bent as elbows moved
behind palms poised above the keyboard.
My fingers moved this machine.

On Greenwich Street I lived in a loft,
watching the game afternoon keys
punch out the strawberries of life.
My freedom from being no longer
held back, the body awoke. Accepting
and rejecting the seas, I poured these
sighs into fingers that scratched at
the poetry of middle life with rumors
and tumors sending the old deal into hiding
from the advancing engine of uncertainty.

waking
from dreams of urban achievements
one hundred story towers of world trade
and the continual mounting of civilizations
risking wars
while love reclaims
the work of
the city.

“I haven’t been outside out yet.”
“You haven’t taken the dog?”
“Ma took her.”
And she says, “You’re gonna sit
there and type out nasty things
at the machine.” I wonder at
my own prejudices

She cat sat in the city.
He picked fruit on the farm.
I wrote the sense of the matter with
errors in spelling and punctuation.
The machine fell and moved,
clanging on the table.

early morning walks
to the store
with the dog
returning home
to the morning paper

the machine responds to pulling and punching
resists in its cyberspace
rejoices in its cyberspace
page after page
wondering at what it’s fed

motion and vision are computed on screens
and our voices become fingers tapping

Before us on the page continuing to the end of words
is a mind squirming under the load of the possible
suppose in the world of the child’s dream.

The writer at this machine looks
for the fracture in the wrested language.

Poets, poetry, song, singers, meters and
the machine’s wonder at the click of keys
bouncing the forms of collaboration
between thought long deliberate
and writing words.

Come to the machine morning reading
this world of power and love flooding the skies.
Lasting poets sing of Beatrice and Laura;
love between the night and reading
in the dark reaching each self
appointed loneliness and disability.
The reading reaching to belong
to an eternal reasoning, resting in peace.
Come to the returning morning wondering
at children sleeping, singing the heart of the art,
feeding words to the world, and
growing tomorrows for this millennium.

In the Brownian solution particles and globules rise shimmering,
weaving about the fluid dissolve of life on Earth;
varying forms come and go, settle but constantly move.

Radar seeks life far away sending beams
to the noble savages of the morning.

In old news, Duran lauded Sugar Ray
for the best fight he could have given.

For a ready audience in the machine, he puts down words.
Sitting in soft jeans, arms cramped at his side, hunched over the words,
his eyes look out from the glass enclosure
into the windy air above the building
and return to the child who eats his dinner.
What will the future say to these words?
Over and again, with the machine in front of him, he writes.