I walk backwards into the booksale and try finding things
With radar and psychic powers. Nothing helps.
I try doing handstands and singing loudly. Nothing helps.

I listened to you all the way along the street and thought
Long and hard about the booksale and my time there,
My life in relation to what I saw there, the tomes and binding
Together of words used cheaply, cast before us swine,
And I didn’t hear anything you said. The streetcar nearly killed me.

At the time, I thought I knew what it was all about, this sale
I figured I had a bead on the moment, a way of seeing the event
That no one else could possibly have, but it just wasn’t true.

Sometimes you let me hold your hand and I think about that
In my dreams at night and try to come up with books to write
So I can find my name among these piles. Dust everywhere, maybe
My words one day in the midst. Anything is possible if you try.
Or, if you dream it in your bed at night awake and bored and sad.

In my dream I walk out of the booksale victorious and carrying
A large box of paperbacks about cooking, science fiction and romance.
I read them to you under the ficus in the living room, on a beanbag.

Sometimes you want a breather from me, and I get that. I want it, too.
I’m horrible. I sometimes go walking fastly, pretending that I might
Just possibly escape myself, but I never do. I drink until I’m blurry,
Hard for others to see, just so I can make myself calm down, but it
Never really works, and I get no work done and I wonder why I did it.

On a quiet night like tonight I lay still and listen to the frogs in the creek
And wonder how I ever got so bad. This bed is cold.