What’s It Good For?

A messenger rose
delivered this report,
I light a little lamp,
Raise my hand, then, whatever
I love it!

Trump and trumpeting. Clang and clangor!

What could I do by cry ‘Ah!’ and stop to finger it?
At which point I draw my sword, make passes as
if I were stabbing someone to death,
cry, “Psh!”

Blown back across the wheels
People drive this way and that
that’s safest.
Back again to this thing I did…

You must be proud of your darning, and yet look how
the whole of you is in your shoe,
soon diminished in
size among the swoon!
About six or seven inches above the mantelpiece,
to be exact!

An old picture for an old room!
Board of trustees,
rub the mist off my window!
Let me count over a few of the things
lost in a lifetime… but after life.

I like to think of it
as a present.
A spurt in the current!

The terrible thing about the fourth is that she does nothing at all!


“A person’s gotta do something
before it gets to late
there ain’t nothing else to do
might as well cultivate”
– Heng-yin