BEAUTIFUL MORNING? (Apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein) Oh what an ozone full morning Oh what a smog filled new day I've got that phlegmy throat feeling More pollution is coming my way. There's a dull brownish haze on the meadow There's a dull brownish haze on the meadow The corn is as high as G. Dubya's thigh And it looks like the trees will continue to die Oh what an ozone full morning Oh what a smog filled new day I've got that phlegmy throat feeling More pollution is coming my way. There's a new song of joy in the boardroom There's a new song of joy in the boardroom The smokestacks of yore can now belch even more As energy profits continue to soar Oh what an ozone full morning Oh what a smog filled new day I've got that phlegmy throat feeling More pollution is coming my way. KILLING (RATS) Rat killing must be silent. It has no words, no songs or anthems. Drums are definitely out. It is not for the rats this silence                      it is for the killers of rats. The men with traps, with white poisons and handguns know this.  The rat killers know rats                    in cellars and old dark places.  Rats who forget to run from men, rats who forget fear and stare at the guns and into the faces                                  of the rat killers who are silent, who are mute to the last moment when the flash and the roar                                                obliterate everything except the small red eyes of fear. Copyright 2003 Steve Alam

BUS TERAGRAM Your reflection comes within inches of my face. In the cold flat glass your lips fill with night, your cheeks flush wet as the highway and your eyes strobe yellow and red as cars stream your hair, sucking time into you, through you. I read your locket name backwards in the glass: TERAGRAM, TERAGRAM carved in a moon gold disk. I will turn from my window, call your name, forward, inches from your face. NOTES FROM THE CORNER I am running out of dimes. Someone has thrown a rock to me. No note was attached. For awhile a line formed. No one smiled when I made faces. They went away. Three moths, a large fly, and something With nine or ten legs died all over the window. I am running out of dimes. I turned off the light. The time is Eleven-five, and forty seconds. The weather will not improve. I have been hiding in this phone booth for five days. I am running out of dimes. I am running out of nickels. SPLASH Running Laughing Into The Sea The Waves Lap Up Your Legs And Your Toetips Itch To Be Starfish...

NOTE FROM THE BATH Margaret, by now you must be bald. Your hair is everywhere. I vacuumed twice, but today a black strand turned up in the aspirin bottle. The drain is still stopped up and I'm not sure I care to fix it. DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY No angels dance    on the plastic head        of this pin, No philosophers      converse         on the simulated              ivory phone, And the wood grained       polymer desktop           grants one tree               eternity. None for me, thank you. GIRLS ARE JUST THE SAME Because boys in treetops laugh at you, because bicycle boys whoop by with whole hills of speed and because larger ones follow you for blocks behind the fence, forgetting on purpose to whisper, do not believe there are none broken beneath the trees, none tangled in spokes just around the corner, none left behind the fence, feet full of rusty nails. Some learn to be sad faster than others. Some slow down enough to be touched. Some may even survive. Then you must be careful.