Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Dropping Leaflets
Are we on the ground now? Ally cells and I said operations.
We cleared 50% of a wonderful friend and enduring opposition.
Take the solid.
Louder.
We clearly are loud. We are the postal system.
No evidence has been information.
Attacking the caves. Are you on the ground enduring?
A wonderful friend ramped it up.
You ought to open your mail.
Opposition element: the air. The talents work with precision.
84%. The population attacking the caves, the talents work with the
caves and tunnels.
Inauguration
The land was there before us
Was the land. Then things
Began happening fast. Because
The bombs us have always work
Sometimes it makes me think
God must be one of us. Because
Us has saved the world. Us gave it
A particular set of regulations
Based on 1) undisputable acumen.
2) carnivorous fortunes, delicately
Referred to here as “bull market”
And (of course) other irrational factors
Deadly smoke thick over the icecaps,
Our man in Saigon Lima Tokyo etc etc
Quiz
Correct answers: c, d, d, b, b, a, b, a, a, c, b, b, b, c, b, d, b, d, c.
— If you scored 14-19, you’ re a well adjusted person, a home-owner, with and income of at least $50,000 a year.
— If you scored 8-13, you either rent or live with your parents, never exercise, and consume at least a 6-pack a day.
— if you scored 7 or less, you’ re in trouble with the FBI and/or the IRS, cut your own hair, and use public transit as your primary mode of transportation.
Why I Might Go to the Next Football Game
sometimes you know
things: once at a
birthday party a little
girl looked at her new party
gloves and said she
liked me, making suddenly the light much
brighter so that the very small
hairs shone above her lip. i felt
stuffed, like a swimming pool, with
words, like i knew something that was in
a great tangled knot. and when we sat
Dew
None are more familiar with dew
than professional footballers. From early
grades they are used to running through
practice drills and hurling their burly
frames through rucks while the moist chaff
of wet grass under the winter lights
softens their fall, accustoms the half-
back to the slippery ball and writes
green cuneiform on wet sandshoes.
And they fear it in the morning,
The Ditch
In the ditch, half-ton sections of cast-iron molds
hand-greased at the seams with pale petroleum waste
and screw-clamped into five-hundred-gallon cylinders
drummed with rubber-headed sledges inside and out
to settle tight the wet concrete
that, dried and caulked, became Monarch Septic Tanks;
and, across the ditch, my high school football coach,
You and I
You are Jehovah, and I am a wanderer.
Who should have mercy on a wanderer
if not Jehovah? You create and I decay.
Who should have mercy on the decayed
if not the creator? You are the Judge
and I the guilty Who should have mercy
on the guilty if not the Judge? You are All
and I am a particle. Who should have mercy
In the Days of Awe
I Amidah
Hear my personal prayer, the words of my mouth and the meditation
of my heart that I may find a way back through love
In the hospital roompacked in blood-soaked cottonthe new mother lay
animal-exhaustedtechnicians whisked the child awayin the first
hours there was fear O teach me to withhold judgment