On the morning that lasts forever
the neighbors are playing a tape of Tibetan
monks again, somewhere between groaning

I am unable to say from what place, from which dream,
anything comes.

                If you were to commit a crime . . .

Within oral slum,
Mr. Illusion-Thaw
wilts humor-nail.

You think me evil? I think so of you.
Before you captured me I was the queen
of Goths, and there I was no lady, but

He looked beneath the rock to find the god
that he had hidden there—that's Oscar
Wilde on Wordsworth's Sublime,

In my day, we knew how to drown plausibly, 
to renounce the body’s seven claims to buoyancy. In my day, 
our fragrances had agency, our exhausted clocks complained 

      It's a morning of snow and crows storming the bare treetops
As if they invade the eves of a burned-out cathedral.
Where are the children? A ludicrous posture of mourning

Boswell ran over to see if they lied;
Johnson declared it impossible, never
could that unbeliever whose work he decried

To begin with: I object to this line
of questioning. Custom holds that being

Out after dark in what was left of the Combat Zone
we ate raw sushi next to Big Mo's Live Sex,