Belated Haiku for a Holy Number

I respect the three

Too much to soil its splendor
With some shitty verse

The Waving Woman

Just before you get to the Prudential billboard,
and you've hit the point of no return, you're leaving
San Francisco, you see a bag lady with a dirty
box face waving at all the cars passing by
at the speed of stop and go traffic. She smiles
and waves at you, the way you occasionally
greet friends you haven't seen in a while. She
does this to every car that passes. She has no sign
explaining anything about her, not even an empty cup.
She's not selling a story. Just selling a smile and a wave.

Beep Beep

In one episode it’s revealed that ACME

is "A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary Of Roadrunner Corporation.”

We never see each week the forty hours of Coyote sitting in his cubicle
in order to mail his paycheck to get some contraption that

invariably blows up in his face.

         Maybe Wile E.’s name isn't so ironic.

Perhaps he's well-aware the Roadrunner makes a living off him, and it’s

some sort of co-dependent victim thing: Coyote wants Roadrunner gone, but

Coyote needs Roadrunner to beep-beep in his face,

to have something to chase. Maybe he’s grown attached to

the feel of wheels falling off his skates,

the rapidly approaching lip of the cliff,

the rocket boosters’ malfunction

that scorches his backside bald.

Thoughts Towards 47th Street

“Forty-Fourth Street.” “Forty-Fifth Street.”

“Soliciting and gambling are prohibited on CTA Vehicles.”

“Forty-Sixth Street.” Always the same chipper trochees,

the same calculatedly absent accent,

and always right on time for the stop.

Never one block ahead or two streets over.

The work that must have poured into this announcement

staggers: careful drafting of messages, the rehearsals

(“Fiddy-Fit—Fifty-Fiff—Forty-Fifth Street”),

the installation and daily inspections,

women and men in red uniforms with clipboards,

their noses in gear boxes, fingers dipped in oil,

not to mention the building of roads through woods,

lifting ancient crustaceans out of rock, centuries of commerce,

and the bus driver pressing the right button at every stop

just on time.