.	to d.a.levy by jonathan moore if levy was right as th death boat swallowed him -only selves gesticulating like a long lousy marriage in cleveland, europe always the same grabby whitefingered mistake keeps coming. & the younger generation has to eat it (sex despite the terrifying commercials, is wet, does make everybody nervous) & know that it waits the way a rainy day waits inside a motorcycle. or DEATH is faster. like what if one day there was no more to say finished kaput THE WHOLE GESHEFT yr note & then gone. or one day it just gets you with an unwrapped tamale in your hand: fear of cancer in dimestores winos, laundromats, reflections in puddles, pictures of yr parents from the twenties in that black&white loneliness, the shoeboxes in the closet in yr parents room that scared you, dark dresses in square plastic shrouds, shoes & shoehorns shoeboxes pops medals pictures of napoli WWII but the SHOES of jews piled in darkness the indians stacked in th snow. what if he had stayed out of the closet where the guns pointed back the mouth with teeth that ate him th key word is fear the key word is cops as they pass up rowdy white jocks to bust niggers down the street in boston brooklyn miami bust caps at fifteen year olds black head comin in the windows dream comin in with long shining truncheons the tac squad leather penis to really let you have it what then the key word is loneliness names written under overpasses on interstates the public secret the ICC doesnt know about & cant understand the silent scribbled din. all the vagabonds are thin & dazed or far & forgetful masturbating into blue bandanas in gas station toilets & poetry isn't ENOUGH to kill the spiders on the wall & now theyre hiding the cities from us with stores that sell parrots & quiche & ugly expensive clothing to welldressed people with hideous expressions on their faces picking apart the braincells til theres no more ganglia left in any one place than a flatworm or a slug. poetry is an ILLUSION some people have time for invest in hold in their mouth but mostly sensitive souls clustering huddling together its nice but its boring & its thin protection at 3 am & the muse i dreamed her up one winter in a bar fifteen minutes to bar time. originally appeared in: A Protecting Music Ghost Pony Press, copyright 1981 jonathan moore