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Metro
Slightly intoxicated on
the metro
in San Francisco you are compelled
to study the uninhibited
man tracing scenes with his right hand
on the Plexiglassed ad for safe sex.
As his fingers move over the shocking
red S-E-X, you think he is
hallucinating, another vet on Haldol,
spending his dollar-a-day riding high
to Castro for free condoms or needles,
until you see the coarse paper he refers to
in his left hand, a letter scripted in black
figures -- Mandarin -- a language
he returns to when the under-
imagination of English is too much.
You are conscious then
that this is a man who sees what he is about
to say, a man who pictures
his dreams in the smallest of frames,
poems the details, adjective and verb both,
whole landscapes of thought brushed
in carefully pieced sequences. Elegantly,
he composes his air reply, swiftly moving
from one character to the next, unafraid
to lose the figures borne of this moment,
unafraid to exit the metro proofless, yet satisfied.
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