I love Uncle Vanya because
he has handled both sheaves and accounts
and holds no enmity for any man
who knows how to turn his hand to hard work.

I love Uncle Vanya because
he can mimic the man strangling
on the lanyard of his own devising
so comically, like a fat cat choking on a fish bone,
tongue lolling, hacking, he makes you believe
he could really do even that someday.

I love Uncle Vanya because
under all that frustration and pettiness
he can soften a little, just for a few minutes.

Of course Sonya is the better person,
purer of heart, more interested in truth,
more forgiving, even if a bit Pollyanna.

One can’t argue who suffers more.
It’s not a contest. It has more to do
with style than who gets to
the finish line first.

I love Uncle Vanya not because
I have wasted my life, though I can’t say
I’ve made the best use of it either,
but only because he’s so good at what he is.

I’m too drunk to make sense
just now, or I’d call you
on the phone. My tongue
is clotted. My brain
temporarily bedded down.

I think
I’ve never understood your poems
until now. No, I know it,
not think.

In manuscript,
hung by clothespins from wires
in a basement in the foreskin
of Lake Michigan
I was looking
for something
I could take away from your drafts.

That kind of theft.

~ ~

From the first
you make me see.
Allow. Perform.

“Rhetoric enacts shapes of mind,”
she’d said.

~ ~

I’m begging for forgiveness.
I’m 51 years old.
All I’ve wanted was to sing.
Now I’m afraid I’m falling asleep.

Keep singing. Someday
I might hear it, realize

I’ve mistaken the curtain
for a wall.

In the mirror at the bottom
my face is only a quivering shadow,
the sky behind it clear but circumscribed.

I climb down with a bucket
and scoop it a quarter full. The ladder
is hauled up. The sand grows suddenly soft.

I like it when you clean your nails.
It never fails
to make me feel like life has a purpose.
That I’m not worthless.

I hate it when people disagree with the President
or the way our money’s spent.
If you don’t like it why don’t you move to Iraq?
And don’t come back.

I love it when everyone falls into line.
It looks so fine.
Like Flanders Fields, or Arlington.
The sign we won.

In spite of it all, my pen is a pretty
kind of blue, and squishy in the middle.
I’d like to give it to my new friend
but I don’t think she’d understand.

Why do you stand up there, day after day,
killing Shakespeare over and over again?
His sonnets can barely defend themselves
and even the clock is too tired to move.

in trade for the roar and convenience
of the gasoline engine and the irony
of smoky coal firing your illumination?

Your thumbs fly over the keypad, hungry
for confirmation that your uniqueness
is one of the greater blessings of creation.

Your garden abounds with a perfect balance
of hues and a progression of pretty-faced flowers
begging for the bees to fulfill their needs

to mate pollen with stigma, but even when the
neighbors shower compliments, your deflections
leave you missing the very thing you thirst for.

You drive to a show, hoping to see magnified
the codex of infinite affirmation, but find fault
with the action, direction, the whole premise.

Returning to your home, its superfluous rooms
lit head to toe, a beacon tossed to a universe
too infinite for the signal to be noted,

you stand in the glare of the open coldbox
stuffed with bright colors and slogans,
angry at the surplus of choices.