John Ashbery




Breezeway

Someone said we needed a breezeway 
to bark down remnants of super storm Elias jugularly.  
Alas it wasn’t my call. 
I didn’t have a call or anything resembling one. 
You see I have always been a rather dull-spirited winch.  
The days go by and I go with them. 
A breeze falls from a nearby tower, 
finds no breezeway, goes away 
along a mission to supersize red shutters.

Alas if that were only all. 
There’s the children’s belongings to be looked to 
if only one can find the direction needed 
and stuff like that. 
I said we were all homers not homos 
but my voice dwindled in the roar of Hurricane Edsel.  
We have to live out our precise experimentation.  
Otherwise there’s no dying for anybody, 
no crisp rewards.

Batman came out and clubbed me. 
He never did get along with my view of the universe 
except you know existential threads 
from the time of the peace beaters and more. 
He patted his dog Pastor Fido. 
There was still so much to be learned 
and even more to be researched. 
It was like a goodbye. Why not accept it, 
anyhow? The mission girls came through the woods 
in their special suitings. It was all whipped cream and baklava.  
Is there a Batman somewhere, who notices us 
and promptly looks away, at a new catalog, say, 
or another racing car expletive 
coming back at Him?