Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OZONE AVENUE, by JANE MILLER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OZONE AVENUE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: These days I love to dream
Last Line: Flicking volcanic ash off a cigarette.
Subject(s): Absence; Love - Loss Of; San Francisco; Separation; Isolation


These days I love to dream,
then I go hear Romeo Void.

It's a gentle hell, beloved.
Teen-age boys with lead guitars

singing a number like
there is no like,

you're gone.
I suck the little megawatts of my memories

which are nothing
exactly like mirrors

in a bar in a different mentality,
L.A., Albuquerque, Berkeley,

queens drunk and coked to the teeth
for the imprimatur of the closing

bells. I imagine
I do you

riding toward my fascination
the speedway, and the next minute

the next minute
sniff jasmine no one sees.

I lose the image of myself the rest of the world has
to catch up with. How long are you going to be

the rest of the world? One long day
the lover you left me

for returns to sleep
with you, you can't do it, it's ancient,

like talking
about sex and not realizing the lead

singer has one leg squeezing the other around a mikestand.
Knowledge is useless,

Heaven in script on a turquoise sweatshirt,
with Private Clubs for Los Ojos.

Where is this room?
Just a sweater with nothing under it,

a blanket with the design of the future.
I can see how she is because we only just met.

So used
to living intimately sometimes I wake

feelings in others I don't know.
Mornings the prostitutes

on Mission in halter tops and pumps
ignore me as if I'm just another

voluntary miscarriage of an intellect.
Forever is getting faster,

air
traffic no one hears over a beach.

You make a small gesture on that beach, love,
flicking volcanic ash off a cigarette.





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