Looking Down as I Walk

The life of the mind
is writing your name
on a jailhouse wall.

I guess I had to go to hell.
And now the stupid bell rings
when I walk by Richmond Place
and it freaks me out like it always did
as I recall how Michele
had warned me when I was on
the precipice of solipsism.

But like I said, I had to go.
And if there’d been some hand
to hold in that
drastic symbolic mess
I would have grasped it.