You’re born that way—or else you’re not.
It’s snowing—or else it’s hot.
It’s like the strangeness, that’s also natural,

I live a life of appetite and, yes, that’s right,
I live a life of privilege in New York,
Eating buttered toast in bed with cunty fingers on Sunday morning.

even higher
among the oaks
there is nothing but oaks

we had climbed up the mountain
towards the colossal figure of the temple
now reduced to ruins

The long day has ended in which so much
And so little had happened.
Great hopes were dashed,

Bad luck, my very own, sit down and listen to me:
You make yourself scarce for months at the time
Making preparations for some new calamity,

I’m the uncrowned king of the insomniacs
Who still fights his ghosts with a sword,
A student of ceilings and closed doors

It pains me to see an old woman fret over
A few small coins outside a grocery store—
How swiftly I forget her as my own grief

Moving as a mind moves across a math problem,
Or an eye across a lover’s body,
Or a dragonfly across the sky,

As if in answer to a primordial urge,
I longed for something
to which to