Poems Notes

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.

Her eyes are sad

and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.

The light is dim.

The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,

their blond legs burn like a brush.

The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.

When I get on my knees and lick her hand,

she screams.

I am a new man.

I snarl at her and bark.

I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

6 stanzas, 3 lines

A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music.

Then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when tears of the sea fell from

the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a

heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the

distance, at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was thunder, which, however

menacing, would become music, and the memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what

happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.


I didn't really get the poem

Every few minutes, he wants

to march the trail of flattened ryegrass

back to the house of muttering

hens. He too could make

a bed in the hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh

it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it

to his ear while the other children

laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,

so little yet, too forgetful in games,

ready to cry if the ball brushed him,

riveted to the secret of birds

caught up inside his fist,

not ready to give it over

to the refrigerator

or the rest of the day.

1 stanza

15 lines