What I Can’t Do

He’d come looking, he said, for a job.

With whom had he worked last? I asked.

“With the mob,” he replied. “But nobody died.”

What were they a mob of, I wanted to know.

“Commuters at Grand Central Station, of whom,

when they just had de-trained or were waiting to go,

I relieved of their wallets and purses and bags –

to leave with them naught but defenseless woe.”

He’d won me with “naught.” But what did he think

I would have for him here? “It appears from the gossip

that reaches my ear that you link word to picture,

depicting odd creatures, none odder than I – and than

whom, as you’ll surely agree, no one else you’ll have

met can display more inimitable ambiguity.” In truth,

he was much like the rest of the megalomaniac pie

which in slices construes me to bring them to view.

But I liked him, I said, and he now shares my bed,

and meticulously picks my pockets quite clean.

At moments I almost shout “get the hell out!”

But I can’t do that. That would be mean.

.