Occasioned By Your Thirty-Seventh, Part 4 (or, Ode To Heen)
Nor am I blameless.
I am blameful, blameish;
the willing receptacle both of
incipient blame and blame
in full bloom—spring blame—
that in the summer turns this
sort-of always-on blame such
that you can't even believe
that, even as the days grow shorter,
that this moody city sunset
light of blame won't last forever.
I bear fall blame's brunt like
Armstrong's gutterance at
the end of his notes, and the first
truly chilly daybreak. I'm on for
Christmas blame and Hanukkah
blame, and then
I'm your man for each and every
burst of blame, in every season,
until there are no more seasons.
Toes cold at three-thirty blame.
Rainbow ice burn on the back of
the tongue blame. Horn bleat
at the wind-wrecked corner
of Atlantic and Barclays blame.
Blame on the subway; blame on the
streets; blame in the trees, desperate
to drop.
Or I am at the equator of blame,
from zenith to nadir
and nadir to zenith, held frozen on the
Y-axis as I churn my legs sideways, ‘til they melt.
But I take nothing away from you.
I think we'd be brothers even if
all we shared were running shoes.
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