Kafka’s Robinson

It’s gotten to the point where
you, yourself, are dreaming
that you’re Robinson.

Your ragged soul and principles
piloted by someone
in a P-51 Mustang over the Pacific.

In the streets of Brooklyn
weeds grow in the rubbish
that litters the street corners.

The young, pregnant wife
waits for her husband
to get back from the European Theater of War.

How she will tell him
she is pregnant by somebody else, she doesn’t know?
In Manhattan the cops are brutal,

harsh with the hobos
who arrive from Kansas,
mistaking East Coast for West Coast.

Thank God, when you wake up
you’re no longer Robinson,
which is more than Robinson can say.