It was good, but / seemed not good enough. / It was heartless / but throbbed nonetheless.
We meant / to be / equal / to what / awaited / us
We embrace him / as machines spin forward our artifacts
Yes, I guess I could measure my wealth / in the times when I haven’t been bored
I tell a timid student start writing heroic couplets. Loose / ones, but still. I figure it’s like giving her a hand to hold, a boost,
Think nothing of it. Hand your words, / not even enough to be a poem, / to that piano man.
Three palm trees edging / a Florida bay, irises I planted, now a snarl / in Tennessee
The limp and worm eaten alder leaves / won’t stop moving in this afternoon’s breeze
My whole life I’ve played / a silver instrument, a hand-me-down
So it’s true . . . even the formerly respiring / and the brazenly perished can stand to improve.
