Christ, am I really doing this again?
Compulsively compiling common rhymes
to play out paradox just one more time ---
am I just sprinkling hydrants with my pen?
Formality's an ersatz collagen
which juvenates a tired pantomime
to figure forth bathetically sublime
for 14 lines --- but what can I do then?
Repeated steps occur in every dance
but some of us just never seem to quit
rehearsing where we (failed) dare not advance,
repenting sins we never dared commit,
rewriting palimpsests to blot out chance ---
but let's go dancing --- all this wit is shit.


March 1987