And there it is all at once a red Russell Stover
Blimp flying north after the plane
That just took off from West Palm Beach

Due to formatting, this poem is best displayed as a PDF.

Yes I helped decree it.
In the white-walled
room of before with
strangers + veils.
Don’t think I don’t think
about it daily. Up here
fumigating my oriel
according to the Newer
Ordering. I feel exactly
how we got here.

I name you Miranda for the wonder
of striped wings, nighthawks that until today
I had not seen hunting since the first year

Sometimes I prefer not to untangle it.
I prefer it to remain disorganized,

because it is richer that way,

In the hospital waiting room, seated in my plastic chair,
I think about Leonard Cohen and start quietly to cry.
I’m glad no one is watching, because I can see

Obviously, it’s a category I’ve been made aware of
        from time to time.

Narcissus was finally released, though sentenced
by demonic pardon to wander the ends of earth
searching for her. In southern Arizona, he heard

These days I take my dying seriously,
after trying, and failing, to make it into a joke.
The silence was what doomed me ultimately:

So weakened by life he could just pass
through the world this hospital bed,
he lies as still as someone already dead.