Four Disinterested Prayers

Alcohol offers dimensions and a vanishing point;

Benzedrine qualifies the metaphors.

Tam alone and the ten thousand

Pressed against me, hip, thigh, breast and the seeking fingers

Through the tissue jungle, scream with loneliness

And die by the hour, on the hour, and because...

Pale moon, the rockets have your answer now.

The other face is emptier than Sphinx's smile,

And televised for travelog.

They yawn out of the theatre yearning for Mars

In technicolor, filled with cod-piece heroes

And the unavoidable structure inherent in the girls.

Uncompromising adventist, what

Would any coming do for you?

You cannot eat the streets or scale the walls

Or play the instruments, or frame the paeans again.

Having no questions, you require no answers,

Pale nuns without retreat, pale wingless aeronauts,

Cash for your equity. We offer top dollar

For any lien on your future sufficiently

Redolent of your past to be caught up and run

Along the crimp-edged paper conveyor of our time

In office hours. The moon we'll sell you or the arena,

Stimulants, depressants and the world beyond your door,

On time, only on time, we are geared to time:

The irrevocable future, the flayed past.

The moon and yesterday are yours for a small down

payment,

But the interest is retroactive, back to Charlemagne.