Sampling
Ralph Angel - 1951-2020
I’m standing on 10th Street. I’m not the only one. Buildings rise like
foliage and human touch.
And so shall dig this cigarette as my last, and rattle trains, and rot the fences
of the gardens of my body—
or without the harmony of speaking here the many sounds and rhythms that
sound a lot like anger
when anger’s silent, like a painting, though in the stillness of the paint itself
the painter nods or waves or asks for help.
I’m not the only one. The pharmacy’s untitled. The stars are there at night.
In this Humidity
the forlorn singing of the insects clings to anything nailed down. A whole bag of
things I’m working
through, some set things that I know, like words I know that mean "from
one place to another," the word that means
"to carry." I’m standing still on 10th Street. I’m not the only one.
The dark tastes of salt and oranges. Its eyes
wander round and round. I am its thousand windows. I think about the future
and the sea. And stay.
