How to Survive

Quit smoking. Don’t bet on the horses

at all. And out of the pustules don’t

try to make roses, gems, at last exalt

them into stars. Remember Anthony?

He was never at his window; if ever

he was the beloved it was only as a figure

of Abundance is made of hard grey stone.

Probably he sold drugs to the lax bros

shouting up from the coffee shop patio

where you were twenty-two and loved

a torch song. No one was asking you

to carry carts full of stones, to rent

that apartment full of cave crickets,

to try to vacuum them up. No one

was writing you into a novel although

in complicated dresses you fell off

a scaffold and out of a wheelbarrow

and once disappeared in Memphis

to wake missing nothing but your shoes.

The porter was so kind. Kissed mouths

don’t lose their freshness; like the moon

they turn up new and how to survive

of course you’ve read: only remember

the serenading is always overdone.