The lessons we learned here (fumbling with our lunchbags, handkerchiefs & secret cheeks of bubblegum) were graver than any

Exploring each other’s depths, that surge of connection which makes the world seem sane,

All night he lies awake tuning the… tuning the night with its fat crac… with its melancholy love songs cro… across the rainy air above Verdun & the autobahn’s blue suicidal…

Nobody believes in love– not even me. Love is the thing you wait to end.

We used to strike sparks off each other. Our eyes would meet or our hands, & the blue lightning of love

If God is a dog drowsing, contemplating the quintessential dogginess of the universe, of the whole canine race, why are we

The old poet with his face full of lines, with iambs jumping in his hair lik… with all the revisions of his body unsaying him,

The poet fears failure & so she says “Hold on pen— what if the critics hate me?”

A man so sick that the sexual soup cannot save him - the chicken soup of sex which cures everything: tossed mane of noodles,

You call me courageous, I who grew up gnawing on books, as some kids

Because my grandmother’s hours were apple cakes baking, & dust motes gathering, & linens yellowing & seams and hems

(a flip through BRIDE’s) The silver spoons were warbling their absurd musical names when, drawing back

You gave me the child that seamed my belly & stitched up my life. You gave me: one book of love poem… five years of peace