Empire Of Dreams
by Charles Simic

On the first page of my dreambook
It’s always evening
In an occupied country.
Hour before the curfew.
A small provincial city.
The houses all dark.
The store-fronts gutted.

I am on a street corner
Where I shouldn’t be.
Alone and coatless
I have gone out to look
For a black dog who answers to my whistle.
I have a kind of halloween mask
Which I am afraid to put on.

The Altar
by Charles Simic

The plastic statue of the Virgin
On the top of a bedroom dresser
With a blackened mirror
From a bad-dream grooming salon.

Two pebbles from the grave of a rock star,
A small, grinning windup monkey,
A bronze Egyptian coin
And a red movie-ticket stub.

A splotch of sunlight on the framed
Communion photograph of a boy
With the eyes of someone
Who will drown in a lake real soon.

An altar dignifying the god of chance.
What is beautiful, it cautions,
Is found accidentally and not sought after.
What is beautiful is easily lost.

to fate - charles simic

To Fate
by Charles Simic

You were always more real to me than God.
Setting up the props for a tragedy,
Hammering the nails in
With only a few close friends invited to watch.

Just to be neighborly, you made a pretty girl lame,
Ran over a child with a motorcycle.
I can think of a million similar examples.
Ditto: How the two of us keep meeting.

A fortune-telling gumball machine in Chinatown
May have the answer,
An old creaky door opening in a horror film,
A pack of cards I left on a beach.

I can feel you snuggle close to me at night,
With your hot breath, your cold hands--
And me already like an old piano
Dangling out of a window at the end of a rope.

kazoo wedding - charles simic

Kazoo Wedding
by Charles Simic

The groom is red-cheeked as he blows into a kazoo
And so is the bride as she blows one too.
The guests are blowing hundreds of kazoos
And the Minister as he prepares to bless their union.
The weeping bridesmaid covers her ears.
One sounds like a bad muffler on a hearse,
Another like a wedding dress ripped open at midnight.
Look, even our Lord on the cross is tooting a kazoo!
What are they playing? the hard of hearing are asking.
It's a wedding march, Grandpa, the ushers shout.

department of complaints - charles simic

Department Of Complaints
by Charles Simic

Where you are destined to turn up
Some dark winter day
Walking up and down dead escalators
Searching for someone to ask
In this dusty old store
Soon to close its doors forever.

At long last, finding the place, the desk
Stacked high with sales slips,
Concealing the face of the one
You came to complain to
About the coat on your back,
Its frayed collar, the holes in its pockets.

Recalling the stately fitting room,
The obsequious salesman, the grim tailor
Who stuck pins in your shoulders
And made chalk marks on your sleeves
As you admired yourself in a mirror,
Your fists clenched fiercely at your side.

country fair - charles simic

Country Fair
by Charles Simic

If you didn't see the six-legged dog,
It doesn't matter.
We did and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.

description of a lost thing - charles simic

Description Of A Lost Thing
by Charles Simic

It never had a name,
Nor do I remember how I found it.
I carried it in my pocket
Like a lost button.

Horror movies,
All-night cafeterias,
Dark barrooms
And poolhalls,
On rain-slicked streets.

It led a quiet, unremarkable existence
Like a shadow in a dream,
An angel on a pin,
And then it vanished.
The years passed with their row

Of nameless stations,
Till somebody told me this is it!
And fool that I was,
I got off on an empty platform
With no town in sight.