The Debt

I've owed the newsstand man a quarter
for a little more than a year
on  a copy of the Times he gave me
one morning when I came up short.
I walk past him every day now.
His gray beard still the same,
arrayed around him, gum, and newsprint.
In sunshine snow and rain.
When I pass he doesn't look at me.
Doesn't remember, probably,
That I never paid my debt.
But I haven't stopped at that newsstand
Since he let me have the Times.

Ginsberg’s Bus

One Sunday morning in November
Alan Ginsberg caught a bus
On Avenue A and mounted it
Like a salmon above his mantle.

It was cold, but hadn't snowed yet
Though the thought was there
In the way the exhaust curled
And bounced along the pavement

He looked out his window
Past his coffee cup, empty
After a night writing letters
And saw it lumbering like oxen.

Around the corner of St. Marks
Where a bongo player'd passed out
On the sidewalk, with a cop
Too bored to beat him.

That bus was caught without knowing
And now it's all that's left
Of that morning, that corner,
Or Ginsberg, for that matter,
Although it still belongs to him.