Couldn’t look at myself. I trust you saw my taupe
skin on the clammy bedsheets clearer than I did.

Broken lines continue, you know, way past
their breaks, as medians in roads do, or
the dot tracings in kid’s books, where the last

All my life I’ve had goals to go after, goals
in a molten distance.

I try to keep the promises I make
—for each one broken breaks the world—and seem
inhuman: no crack, no fissure, no mistake.

I love desire, the state of want and thought
of how to get; building a kingdom in a soul
requires desire. I love the things I’ve sought—

The middle-aged man decides to cut a hole in his breakfast table, to stick his finger in and so carry around with him that table, his breakfast-recollection.

Because you are the Visiting Distinguished, and because our whole city is celebrating your illustrious Treatise On Weeping, I am giving a party in your honor and discussing with you some prominent instances of weeping

It is true, it is true
Sing the whippoorwills slightly off-key
In the small city park at night.

“Nebraska and Oklahoma have the longest contiguous border
Of any two states,” you announce.
Your hair stands up in corkscrews

I stare out the plate glass window
At sky over the Boston Common
Where seagulls coast past