The Name

Having outlived Allen I am the one who

has to suffer New York all by myself and

eat my soup alone in Poland although

sometimes I sit with Linda he met in Berkeley

or San Francisco when he met Jack, the bread

just coarse enough, the noodles soft but not

thin and wasted, and not too salty the way the

Chinese further down sometimes make them, the

name still on my mind whatever the reason for

mystery, or avoidance, though rat Netanyahu

and pig that swings from a needle or lives in some

huge incubator, they do darkness where there

was light, the name hates them, the name

in hiding, the name with a beard, and Linda she

loves the name though she invokes her Christ

as Jack her lover and tormentor did and

taught her to do though it is too easy, that,

it troubles me but what can I say, what should I

say while we walk north on the right hand side,

past the pork store and the hardware store, me lecturing

on Logos (my God) and what not Hebrews and Greeks

where Allen and I once kissed, Jack in the sun now.