I’m tired of life and its troubles.
Whoever lives as long as I have or will
grows weary: it’s inevitable.

The leopard cannot change his spots (they’re sewn
into his fur), yet he licks them through and through.

Each of you who writes reports illness, pain from love
      spilt

I was looking 
for the two 
black men

Tide was in when we waded into the idle current.
In a scorpion’s spinal curve, it would tow us miles
into the ocean’s briny green-white surf.

Such is the way with monumental things:
to make us see and wonder.

We hurl ourselves over
      then over again
into the wall

I could laugh, but instead a kind of pity
finds me, compels me actually to pray,

this face, these hands. I’ve lived too long underground.
My eyes cannot fix on the distance

How easily I teased these pins from her
robes once. Coaxing each one out with my mouth,