If I Were a Famous Musician, This Would Be My Application to the Club

IIIx

Sinope concluded that the absence of passion

was better than incomplete passion

and I tend to agree,

though I’ve been known to digress.

But I can never wander far

from the truths and the riddles:

“When every bone in your grip is broken,

your weeping will be quenched.

When you are out of outs,

you will find your way in.”

IIIx

Twenty seven new books

and twenty seven old letters

stuffed into an envelope

with a Claude Pepper stamp:

a warning – a blessing – from

the lips of Abbé Faria, eleven

years too early, never too late.

III.

I take a stand, open

to amendments, fundamentally

opposed to closing my eyes

or staring straight ahead.

All around, possibilities

and dead ends.

All around, the madness

of beautiful uncertainty.