Chris Rizzo, VARIATION ON RACHMANINOFF'S BIRTHDAY

Voilà! The way shit happens, you stroll outside
to see what type of day it is and you'll be damned:
200 pounds of guerilla for sale, a green-eyed leopard
clicking her heels professionally, Martians
in windows, buses cramped with long faces of ghosts—
you don't know how to feel about all this,
but there's a pot left on a stove
and the coil of somebody's lover is burning away...
I'm a child again too, awed when I should
have been sobered, now a spy
buzzed on air, on a mission to nowhere—heads-up
where you step—ambergris and pollen,
sage and saga loose in a bag-o-wind. Sweet music,
you've gone and fucked me rotten.