2003/nolife

I don’t know how
to live any more,
something I realize
reading poems written by men
who have affairs out of town,
poetic men who congregate and drink,
until life seems to sizzle again.
That wouldn’t work for me.
The problem is I don’t
know what would.
The life I had erased
a little at a time,
the reverse of various
teachers filling a blackboard,
a cacophany of handwritings
and texts –
the heiroglypics of my life,
as though stitched in silk,
on the wrong shirt,
unraveling so slowly
no crinkle remains
in the thread.

9/29/03