"Why do these diseases exist? Most of us are doing alright.

"Interrogate the will," my mother always said,

Take a look on the subway," my freshman-year roommate said on the steps

by store-light, Tuesday nights in the grocery, nights when I

of The Rockefeller University. "It's not like you and I are here, while remaining

couldn't sleep. "Look at my face. Now look at the magazines."

in their homes are five times as many ill. The race is doing very well, as a species.

And what she meant by that..."nothing relates, no not 'relates'—

Maybe we have the luxury now to start noticing this. Or maybe our environs

remains." And she'd shove me among the nectarines.

are changing.

"'Die'
It is unnerving.

is the German word
It feels like a reason.

for 'thrive,'" she lied.
You sense something else."

We were bewitched by regression. Waves or blinds withdrawn.

And now, Freud is a coke-head on Taco Tuesday at the Westville Hudson

on the corner of Charlton and Hudson streets, east of the river, below Greenwich

Village, north of TriBeCa, west of SoHo, while listening to "Awful Sound (Oh
Eurydice)," trying to remain doctoral and Viennese. Indeed his language remained

methodical and precise, saying things like, "Valid though some of these excuses

maybe be, they do not cover the whole state of affairs that confronts us in

the case of Leonardo," or "We can now reconstruct the origin of

Leonardo's vulture fantasy as follows," or "The impression

made by this failure to pass the first test of

intellectual independence appears to be

long-lasting and deeply depressing."

On another night
on another night like this
on a quiet and quite paranoid night
with bologna sandwiches
and your journey to the microwave,
and your steps down the yellow stairs,
and your handkerchief, which I have
for some uncanny reason:

you must change your life
you must change your life man
they are not listening to you
and maybe they
never were
for