I have spent my life preparing for life like setting a table for guests I haven’t invited starched linen napkins, glowing candles Boeuf Bourguignon simmering on the stove like trying to lose ten pounds, sweating on a Peloton going

That meteor we saw in April didn’t mean anything nor did the fireworks in July nor did every single I love you goodnight text not a single one meant anything. Let that sink in as a bad diet choice.

flicker in,                fade out a spark is all I need, just a taste of heat and I’d ignite back to the inferno I once was. pour me into your veins, nurse me

Three old men on the bench at the edge of the square lean against the frescoed wall of the restaurant all evening long listen to oak leaves bristle under the swarm of starlings who rustle in at dusk. Hands

You are memory. Unstable, volatile, vaporous. I spread clay across your skin until you exist in solid form—a monument. Before this clay dries, I locate a place, a corner perhaps, to create a small opening, an aperture allowing your

I pick you up my white-haired woman creased and milkless & toss you         far into the future where you will be spared rage       & resignation the slow strangle of depression & unbounded

it has the feeling. not the feeling, but the square root of it. there are moons everywhere and they are tender to the touch. it is all very geometrical, isn’t it. god would say this; would remark on the geometricality.

At sixty, I pee all day, and sometimes at night. I say, “Sorry,” to my wife, as I toss covers and the cat for the bathroom. If I’m lucky and drank beer before bed, I may go even more.