I know down from up and this ain’t up.
The street flows like an ice floe down the street.
Buildings on either side bow from the waist mockingly,
Mocking me.
A center strip of green, which
For some reason they call a mall, divides
Uptown and downtown traffic from each other,
Going north and going south from each other.
I’m talking to the sky, which doesn’t hear me of course
Because of the traffic noise or whatever.

Never mind the ice flow.
I’m thinking about how hot it is.
I’m thinking about the wonderful Laure de Gourcuff,
Whom many years ago I was almost in love with,
Pronounced de Goorkoof.
I want to say something extreme.
She was as quiet as a leaf.
I want to say something intense.
How peculiar to have pneumonia in this heat,
Which I’ve just learned I have.

A patch one-inch-square that the CT scan
Detected inspires
The use of antibiotic megatonnage
To wipe the inflammation off the face of the earth.
You’re printed on my lung, darling, and on my mind.
I am getting young.
So many years have passed.
It’s as if I were making it up.
There we were, down in the Cher,
At their ugly chateau the size of an apartment building.

Oh, my pneumonia!
You and I are about to take a big plane to England.
Do I need permission from my Moxifloxacin?
I just said to my girlfriend,
Whom I will see in London, I said,
Is that a nice way to talk
On Father’s Day to New York?
To the four wheels of your car,
The steering wheel of your life,
The horn that honks you?