Dine in style tonight
With your misery, Adele.
Put on your silver wig

Grandpa loved crawling
Under the skirts of his mother’s friends
As they sat on the porch

Like a busy street scene
Reflected in a butcher’s window:
Trimmed head of a large pig

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

only its maternal dark
could make us luminous.

bent as I was
intently
over the particular.

It’s raining, it’s pouring,
And your heart is sad,
But you’re not about to say it.

Our life stories are scary and droll,
Like masks children wear on Halloween
As they go from door to door

Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.

Bald man smoking in bed,
Naked lightbulb over his head,
The shadow of his cigar