I’m unconvinced that language acquisition
         propagates a body’s
   education

it seeps away at permanence, wears canyons
            from rivulets, recycles cement as sand.
I have experienced water firsthand.

By the fifth day of rain
a few had begun to dance,
though not quite properly,

   preferring not to unround his bubble
of self against the else
         of another

I’m dreaming of the dahlias up there on the radiator
starting to grow leaves

That is a pair of white hands I see
floating in the mirror, the fingers on the left
are blunt and rounded, the ones on the right are raised

I’m singing a song for the romeos
I wore for ten years on my front stoop in the North Side,
and for the fat belly I carried

There is just so much feeling left in me for my old ghost
and I will spend it all in one last outburst of charity.

Imagine you at the beginning of the
longest walk of your life, no thought given to
shoes, socks, toothpaste, hats, and the other
rip-rap, nothing of watches or water, sleeping

He was like you,
always cramming and ramming, spluttering in disgust