IMAGE ON THE MOON

outside the asylum there was a tree.
it was a leafless tree,

very sparse, barely a carcass.

throug this silhouette he viewed the moon.
it seemed as if it perched itself

on one of the twigs.

as time passed it shifted from one twig to another.
often its circular white disc

was patterned with black irregular lines

as if a swarm of black ants were traversing,
intersecting their paths

in a tree-like patter: an image on the moon.
 
 

APRIL NIGHT IN HARLEM

The boy sauntered around the city
tripping, smoking pot.
Holes, cracked asphalt,

moth-eaten doors
opened right on to the sidewalks.
Behind the wooden closures

lives were made, and a crippled
man, supported on wooden stilts,
begged on one leg.

The boy, one among others,
like insects clustering
around a half-devoured carcass.

Only difference here was that
the boy, the cripple,
the moth, and the whore

were pecking at the same
flesh, hung on sale
on boombed-out ghetto racks.