I lie down in the grass
under the stars, on
a night that can

I drink
make Yuri cry
get scared, lose heart

I will build you a flag of how I know:
I am counting blackbirds as they fly away,
When you walk by,

There are real tigers in that jungle,
But I walked through it and came out alive.
My skin is tougher now where they clawed me.

Imagine starting with that option
(a deistic turn of faith, or generosity?)
each lens minutely tinted a petition-

The lighthouse as an image
of loneliness has its limits.

For as we stand on the shore

Imagine a town where no one walks the streets. Where the side walks are swept clean as ceilings and the barber pole stands still as a corpse. There is no wind. The windows on the brick buildings are boarded up with doors, and a single light shines in the all-night diner while the rest of the town sits in its shadow.

It's all talk isn't it, emblem
and suggestion, it's either tremulous stutter
or taunting display: flashy but fleshless, a con man

I support the animals’ urge to survive.
So much for opinions. Slithering, writhing,
nosing my way through dirt, I can identify
with that. I joke to keep the system going.

My thesis concerns the quantification of desire: what constitutes a unit of passion, what represents a significant change in body heat? Think of all the love given out without counting: to the mistress of a man who sleeps in a bed separate from his wife, whose business interests weigh heavily upon him.