from part one / are you going to stay

two cowboys are sitting on a stone bench

the little one orange and yellow and red
the big one bone-brown and tired

it is April in the park and crazy-blue noon

silence grows in the trees

little cowboy kicks a boot at the air
says are you angry Ivan

a walker swishes past in her zippers

dogs call out unnamable needs

and the invisible stars rising
falling

from part two / questions of life and sleep

the cowboys hitch a slow ride
to the cut-down City of Knees

hello Ivan (the front)
hello little cowboy (the back)

Lisa’s got her silver scarf on

her telephone lines rise
and fall in the ever-disk of distance while the radio
plays the only jazzy station she knows

Lisa’s sporting fat black shades and is full-
on exuding diamonds and gin and Greece
without believing in any such things

get in she tells the cowboys who know
cowboys should never
feel this lucky

Lisa doesn’t ask them
where they’re going but little cowboy
wonders where she’s been

she winks at him behind her Jackie-O’s
and turns up sunset jazz

as they roll into the City
she tilts her face up in the mirror

I’ll tell you sometime
her mouth says to what little cowboy
imagines must be angels holding on
white-knuckled to the windshield
flapping in Lisa’s long convertible hair