The Noise of Trouble

Doctor Williams, what exactly do
I owe you? I grip a bialy in my left hand,
and think how you bring us "things."

Flooded in the star ceiling,
the Usenet is "on the fritz"
and a child's notion of causality
is one wall beyond the ditches.

How did the dancers and poets survive
circa '63? Was it a form of penurious intelligence

Or, simply, money found in sofa cracks?

I ape intelligence.
I think of staying stormy
in an Albanian's sense of paradise.
I schlep these oceans of dreams
towards a larger scale of purpose.

On the menu: a cross-cultural burrito
made with Marmite
and a teaspoon of Tang.

How Harold Bloom Chills Out

Right after
Professor Harold Bloom of Yale
explained his
1,000 pages-a-day
reading habit as
"perhaps a neo-Lamarckian
inheritance from an unknown
Talmudic sage ancestor"
the C-Span interviewer asked:
"I've heard you are
a baseball fan"

Bloom's Jabba the Hutt-meets-Falstaff face lit up.
"Oh yes, I've supported the Yankees since 1936,
when an uncle took me to a game.

In fact, when this interview is concluded, I shall
turn on this television set to see
'how the Yankees are doing.'"