Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club : poems, 1975-1990 / August Kleinzahler

ON JOHNNY'S TIME

When Johnny goes out
he's careful what gets into his Time.
He likes Time plain,
the better to taste it run out of him
like water out holes
in the Old Town's corroded pipe.

_What sort of business you in?
the good burgher always asks John.
_Monkeybusiness, is what John likes to tell him,
and won't crack a smile, ever.
That's John.
But when Johnny goes out

on Johnny's own Time
he's out there doing the only one thing:
he's burning off all the stillborn Johnnys
that hatched in his head in the night.
And that John, he won't ever come home,
not until he's right.