We stand at the source, the plane tree and I. Our images reflect off the river. The water-dazzle lights up the plane tree and me.

We stand at the source, the plane tree, me, and the cat. Our images reflect off the river. The water-dazzle lights up the plane tree, me, and the cat.

We stand at the source, the plane tree, me, the cat, and the sun. Our images reflect off the river. The water-dazzle lights up the plane tree, me, the cat, and the sun.

We stand at the source, the plane tree, me, the cat, the sun, and our lives. Our images reflect off the river. The water-dazzle lights up the plane tree, me, the cat, the sun, and our lives.

We stand at the source. The cat will be the first to go, its image in the water will dissolve. Then I will go, my image in the water will dissolve. Then the plane tree will go, its image in the water will dissolve. Then the river will go, the sun alone remaining, and then it, too, will go.

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud Says America is for him a maximum security prison whose walls

Are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes Where you can't tell the show from the commercials;

And as I contemplate how full of shit I think he is, He says that even when he's driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them Like a boiling jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds Of the thick satin quilt of America.

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain, or whether he is just spin-doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night, It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills Spilling from his wounds, and, this is the funny part,

He gasped, "Thank God--those Ben Franklins were Clogging up my heart--

And so I perish happily, Freed from that which kept me from my liberty"--

Which is when I knew it was a dream, since my dad Would never speak in rhymed couplets

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phoney ghetto clothes And I think, "I am asleep in America too,

And I don't know how to wake myself either" And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

"I was listening to the cries of the past, when I should have been listening to the cries of the future"

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand Which turns the volume higher?

First it was next to the huge window, Overlooking the city sky, framed at its ends By a money plant and a rubber plant, One you sold and the other you neglected.

Close by on the sill were candles, wine bottles and photographs. Some of them had to be turned away and some placed elsewhere. Those disapproving eyes needled you as you were doing what you did with me.

Then it was moved next to the wall, I jumped in first And all night long my back, touching the wall, was cold And my face, touching yours, was hot. But I rolled around And pushed you off the bed. Or so you claimed. I accepted.

We switched places and soon I was leaning off the edge. I was Greg Lougains about to win my first diving gold, You were my sly coach, always measuring my performance, Those doubles and triples, pushing me even when I cracked my head.

At last it ended on the other side, almost in the middle, A democratic end game with equal chances to fall off either side. Did we push each other off, finish each other off? Who fell first? Or did we cling to each other, afraid of the demons under the bed?

But this is when I notice a strange pattern, it might be just incidental, But it appears that it moved like a boat, carrying me towards the exit. Maybe your purpose was different; maybe all you wanted to do was save those few steps Before you could jump in with your latest cartographer, as both of you came rushing in.