He :     Deep in the cockerel’s golden heart
              I loosed my bolt.
              The clarion-bird lies mute

A poem must break to the surface
and nibble at light,
confounding refraction

I could not see the life I live.
Wheeling to catch it as it was,
I found myself the fugitive;

Before I knew the Japanese
And they would come down on horses
To chop off fingers for practice with their swords,

Many spoons in the sink, and that means it was a dull night, too much coffee and ice cream, not enough foreplay. If there are many forks, it was probably a good night. But most importantly if there were many knives used, it was a great night, even if misunderstandings arose, people 

When we showed up for the reading drunk, John,
We were in celestial form, unmixed
And brimming. Having just decoded

You must be dead at least ten years.
You must have lived an unremarkable life
before that: a teacher, say, of unremarkable

For the sake of argument pretend
we don't know who they are, this couple,
one on either side of a cast-iron tree

"Once More Valuable Than Gold"
—Guidebook to the Wieliczka Royal Salt Mine

         Were we in Grand Rapids,
   at the Amway
Plaza, say, the seventh or eighth person