Like that funny man on his way to work
talking to himself in a sudden burst
of mental energy, or out on errands
through the city, how strange to witness

the outburst of his mental fury:
an old wound not entirely healed,
a fall from a treehouse he always
blamed on a brother, some humiliation

of intimacy, wedding night, primal moment,
rampant priapism in football showers.
But why should it be entirely bad?
Perhaps in the time it took for him to pass,

he would flash a secret smile
about the morning's bout of oral sex,
or a joke from five years before,
returned to him in all its comedy:

how anything might suddenly flow
into these little ticks, busy fingers
finding a beat to an unheard tune
and like him we expand beyond

normal propriety, lose ourselves in ecstasy
spied on by a girl, late for school,
staring from a bus shelter
who imagines something terrible will happen.