Bernie in his practical coat, brown or grey
Bernie wearing mittens big mittens made
from recycled wool the Washington Post had a whole
story on Bernie’s mittens he became
an instant meme and suddenly we could put a picture of Bernie
anywhere a coffee mug on top of the Empire State Building
even inside this apartment where he is wearing a mask
and those mittens and we could all ask him
some basic questions such as what would he like
for dinner because who wouldn’t want Bernie
to come to dinner.
Yesterday Dan said he
likes list poems. Me too. America
likes poets at least this week
because Amanda Gorman is amazing,
and I, in honor of the strength
of Amanda Gorman, 22, I, one of the millions of poets
in every building, in every town, I will
buy a yellow jacket and a red hat,
and then I’ll write a poem.
Sometimes when I log onto my computer
saying those same words for years for years
log on could be better words when I enter as always
this amorphous all too real one dimensional world
when I sit where I always sit brown coach Moroccan caftan
before I can go where I want to go on this computer on this
couch I am beseeched in an understated way with
laptop words: Prove Your Humanity. I then take
out my notebook and make a list of what I’ve done
that might possibly be ok.
(Trump left this morning to YMCA singing
Village People and)
last night in the Biden Administration
we heard Lori Marie Key
nurse from Michigan sang in the hospitals
Amazing Grace for COVID patients
last night she sang for 400,000 people who died
3,000 every single day last night
we cried when Lori Marie Key emotional
voice one of the first people we see singing
from the new administration she sang Amazing Grace
just like Obama
in the South Carolina church she sang
Amazing Grace for us all.
Noah’s birthday
and we have one more day of This.
Nervous about tomorrow we
meditate work try not to talk about
vaccines, transitions, What Will Happen Next.
As a distraction I read old notebooks
where I always try to write everything down.
From 3 years ago, an unwritten and maybe
appropriate goodbye DT poem.
Adaptive Design: This lamp
is adjustable. Please turn it off
if you ever decide to leave.
Vaccines have become The Big Subject Matter
Did You Get an Appointment a woman I know just a little
asked me on the street yesterday Jill’s husband
Eric said It’s Like the Toilet Paper Run I hate this
unfair system Peter said. Life altering said a famous journalist
we ran into at the farmer’s market. Shortage and anxiety a bad
combination my economist friend Sangeeta explained.
I Got An Appointment people texted. One even said That Was Easy
but it wasn’t. Friends would call with TIPS. Try the drugstore.
We put our names on lists and lists, spent a day
calling the number at the Javits Center where
Barbara got three appointments on the phone for
her family wrote down phone numbers all over my apartment
and then Ellen a stranger on Next Door, my daily reading
matter, said New Appointments are Released at Midnight
from the New York Health and Hospitals Corporation so we
watched a few episodes of Community tried simultaneously
at 12:01 there were actually appointments at Bellevue Hospital
my computer froze and Peter got them both on his phone.