On Going Out To Get The Mail

the droll noon
where squadrons of worms creep up like
stripteasers
to be raped by blackbirds

I go outside
and all up and down the street
the green armies shoot color
like an everlasting 4th. of July,
and I too seem to swell inside,
a kind of unknown bursting, a
feeling, perhaps, that there isn’t any
enemy
anywhere

and I reach down into the box
and there is
nothing not even a
letter from the gas co. saying they will
shut it off
again.

not even a short note from my x-wife
bragging upon her present
happiness.

my hand searches the mailbox in a kind of
disbelief long after the mind has
given up.

there’s not even a dead fly
down in there.

I am a fool, I think, I should have known it
works like this.

I go inside as all the flowers leap to
please me.

anything? the woman
asks.

nothing, I answer, what’s for
breakfast?