What is putting out to sea Today, except this boat of skin And bone floating by In the chipped bathtub?

And what should one do If the tide peels back, beyond The usual distance and one is stranded Off the continental shelf with Shoals of dying memories?

Last night after eating Chinese I was exhorted to be happy And that I have lots of reasons To be so, by an impertinent Fortune cookie.

I must admit that I felt Let down, for I was expecting predictions, Which come wrapped in that shell Of flour, to be more sugary. Say:

I will soon win the lottery Or dazzling poems will efflorescence from My balding pate or more modestly The large bed I now share with books I will share with someone else.

Still like all men, my body Which is replaces itself completely Every seven years or so, finds A reason to go on living, Even if it is mostly yearning

To be singed by passion Rather than living in this way, Which perhaps frightens even the dead. This is the greatest mystery I attempt To decipher, as I listen to it with my Existential angst ridden, insomniac desire For happiness.

The night circles Around the full moon Like an albatross circles The light house at the docks.

Cars on Michigan Avenue Flash eyes of ruby and amber As notes of the sidewalk Saxaphonist split the river Of evening walkers.

The hand in all the stop Signs signals a secret the optic nerve can never Decode. The only key To mystery is music.

Tall towers put on their Tuxedos of light and vertical Lines, and line the boulevards Striking rakish poses, polishing Their pickup lines.

A bass guitar joins in the evening Music, rising her - an anonymous striking Woman - up and up into The gaint circus tent - sky at dusk. She vanishes from sight. Perhaps Her acrobatic leap and fall will be that Of wind and rain, expected tomorrow.