in the park:
the open mouths
of now-
exasperated May flowers
still asking—
what good is shape
to the artist
without color?
Could the length
of life matter
more than the impact?
*
Given the tendency
I have to keep
cropping up
in sentences,
I have begun
to suspect
I can
out-quip
my own death.
*
For every toss
that just feels wrong,
there comes
a semi-
righteous turn—
a neutron
drips radiation,
converts
to a proton;
you squirm
in your dreams,
as if trying
to escape them,
but always
relate them
in first-
person narration.
