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THE WOODEN FLUTE

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I saw them going to the Drake concert,
T-shirts the primary merchandise,
sexiness the ticket, young white girls with glossed lips,
nubile breasts showing,
their faces dead, a crazy person blocking their way for a few seconds
as they piled off the train,
obvious to me,
a license to be sexy the sole reason
for this so-called music's pounding, inane success.
"But sure," I thought, "my poetry
has always been the same thing,
a pathetic attempt to get laid,
my inane poetry a ticket
to learning supposedly, but in the end, just sex."
Remember quoting poems with that beautiful woman at the bar?
Years ago. Iowa City. She knew "Prufrock." 
What is a lyric poem after all
but a wooden flute played outdoors in the evening,
one tremulous note worth an entire song?
Near the alley of trees near the museum,
the flute guy was there, playing,
a slow, languid sound.
Modern life temporarily like a dream. 
My train ride from Boston to Salem had been uneventful, 
my mood neutral.
Just as I turned into the alley
I thought how nice it would be,
look---here comes the poetry---
how nice to make love to her
as the wooden flute fanned out its somber wavering sound
and then a homeless man on a bench
received soft announcement after soft announcement
from his old cell phone,
the same ring my previous phone used to make
when happily she would call me. "Hello," I said 
to myself, how peacefully I murmured it, completely out of my mind, "hello?" 

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