you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction or

the history of melancholia
includes all of us.
me, I writhe in dirty sheets
while staring at blue walls
and nothing.

We are like roses that have never
bloom when we should have bloomed
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting

yes, they begin out in a willow, I
the starch mountains begin out in
and keep right on going without re
pumas and nectarines
somehow these mountains are like

hooray say the roses, today is bla
and we are red as blood.
hooray say the roses, today is Wed
and we bloom wher soldiers fell
and lovers too,

he spoke to mice and sparrows
and his hair was white at the age
his father beat him every day and
lit candles in the church.
his grandmother came while the boy

in the hospitals and jails
it’s the worst
in madhouses
it’s the worst
in penthouses

I laugh sometimes when I think ab
say
Céline at a typewriter
or Dostoevsky...
or Hamsun...

I’ve come by, she says, to tell yo
that this is it. I’m not kidding,
over. this is it.
I sit on the couch watching her ar
her long red hair before my bedroo

the illusion is that you are simpl
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
poem.