There they are, in the full sight of everyone, winking from
                their stones, “It’s me. Over here. Yeah. Bet you don’t
                believe your eyes. I got in!”

Astounding! Or Awesome! Or Epochal!
Some such was the word of his election.
The rooftops and street corners blared it.

Stumbling midnight tipsy in Jackson’s studio,
who knocked black paint over into tomorrow
and throbbing rainbows of our morning after?

Honor, and excellence, and transcendent best,
I was the laurels I denominated:
diadem and queen and diadem’s bearer.

Good old Paul—when he might have been kind
to a kid he, made a pass instead.

Well literally zillions of passes

Pewter, then silver, the palest gold, an almost
silence we almost could hear, dawn led us out.
So light a sound had lifted us from our pillows.

“Feel me to do right,” your father whispered
to you out of the blue of two silences:
his shyness, his dying. How beautifully

The sun goes, So long, so long, see you around.
And zone by zone by zone across America
the all-night coast-to-coast ghost café lights up.

Like bulls trotting on their solemn rounds
over the cow flops, daisies, clover,
checking out the maidens of the meadow,