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DECIDE
Can one decide to love? I don’t think so. We love involuntarily— especially when we love madly. And yet—haven’t I decided crazily? What’s so reasonable that it can’t be ruined by a calm decision? I...
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WHAT WAS THAT THEN?
He told me he loved me physically and turned what he loved into poetry. Is the physical more physical when translated as spiritual? Should I have been afraid when the poetry which came to his aid...
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MY COLLECTION OF LIGHT
My collection of light darkens in my hands. The idea trying to be something else is what wisdom, in secret, finally understands. The poem’s words were changed and it didn’t make any difference....
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IT GOES AWAY
The moon. The way she loved you. It goes away. The colorful shops. The bad cold. The unstoppable. The moon— seen since the first day. It goes away. Every ache and pain when you get old. It goes away....
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MAYBE YOU CAN TELL ME
When we loved, when every minute I waited for you was meaningful outside the café. The night was beautiful and our walk back toyed with anxiety underneath our meaningless talk. How did the Visigoths...
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WHEN DID I LAST KISS WITH MY WHOLE BEING?
When did I last kiss with my whole being? I don’t remember. Why don’t I remember? I chose badly. Elaborate safety followed. Memory is poor and vast. My question slights the present and embarrasses the...
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THE PLAY OF THE YEAR
Our short term success will not punish us any less than if we sinned for eternity. The poem is the poetry, the climate is the weather— whatever is true now is true forever. We cannot put anything off—...
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LAUGH AT THE TOTAL STUPIDITY OF IT ALL
When opposed by the gods and a badly built wall laugh at the total stupidity of it all. When fate interferes with your arrival remember how crooked all arrival is, how yours means less than hers or...
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KEATS’ LOVELY CANYON
To taste your own mouth and find it foul, to look into your own eyes and see a querulous stranger’s, to find the world either too fast or slow, to think—knowing you will think, but never know. No one...
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TWO SOULS ARE NEVER CLOSE
Two souls are never close. As we embraced, our minds were writing poetry. She was writing a poem called Disgrace, which had no words, yet, and mine was done. I described her face. I required no...
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THE ROOT OF LOVE IS NOT ALWAYS LOVE
The root of love is not always love. Love is not like music. Love is more complex. Beethoven and Mozart weren’t good at it. The musician stutters as he talks about his ex. The music flows. Mozart is...
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THERE IS NOTHING MORE DULL
There is nothing more dull than a tall man devoting himself to poetry.If he were smelly and small. Or French.But no, he simply cannot forgive himself at all.The T.S. Eliot episode is hardly worth...
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THE BAND OF POETS
The Imagist was the bass player, the lead singer,a student of Philip Larkin. The lead guitar was a rhyming hack. The rhythm guitarist was a prosepoet all the way, and the drummer studied Milton—an...
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TOO MANY THINGS ARE HAPPENING AT ONCE
Should I take the commuter rail from North Station? Oh hell it’s too late, I’ll walk (it’s nice out) to the subway. A green car is in the wrong lane as a group of us hurry in the crosswalk, the walk...
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THE BEAST IN EVERY DREAM
The beast in every dream is the same— the one we cannot talk to, the one we cannot blame. The beast gains sympathy from everyone; we falter, but the beast, inscrutable, goes on. The indifferent...
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I RUINED MANY POEMS
I ruined many poems, writing to you, pathetically trying to win you back with bitterness and anger, enough to ruin my social reputation, too. The bounty sours, excess now a lack. I know singers have...
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WE WOULD RATHER BE ALONE
We can scratch and chew and stroke ourselves as we see fit; we know our mind, every last shadow; we don’t know another’s. The things people say about love isn’t the same as it. There is a brawling...
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IF MY POLITICS OFFENDS
If my politics offends, remember: politics is dual— love is singular. We do not appear to be friends because we are in love. I argued with myself: “You are not in love with her” and kept losing. A...
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WHAT IS POETRY?
Picking up, at random, the 2023 February issue of Poetry, I perused coldly its self-conscious verses. The iconic Poetry! Founded in the beginning of the previous century by a female poet with funds...
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THEY DO NOT SEEM LIKE POETS
They don’t seem like poets.They don’t read poetry or write poetry.They don’t like poetry,but poetry over the ages has reached into their bones.They don’t think or describe things like poets but damnif...
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