about that woman who was always breaking into song;
did she ever find the key?
we tend to take the hardest way,
and i'd like to break in here and
(of course, give the floor
and apologise for the time i opened the door
(or the keyhole)
or peered down that alley
or watched myself peer down that alley
from a bus driving by,
just before i tapped me on my shoulder
and interrupted (excuse me?)
my train of thought,
but i was very polite and tried to answer any questions i might have
apologising)(and the interruptions are not always abrupt, but seem
to fade in or out....
but i never spoke again about what i saw
in that room; you're glad i didn't?
and sometimes, i think that bus travel is a subset of my life,
that i can put it in brackets and call it something else
(still under the general heading,
and going in the same direction,
and the sets (within sets,) like nameless commuters, or even the people
who live on your floor)
i'd say lives nested like dolls,
i'd call it by the mathematic names of overlapping sets or domains,
i'd look again if i had a chance,
(to refer to that time by the alley, when i got so distracted)
i'd arrange it in order and add one to another
( you can try, when the manuscript
if there could be an order, if all of the sets would close
(...is finished)
(...but we're still parenthetical to one another)
if they would become entities, or remain entities,
if life would hold still.)
8 Feb 1996