How to Hand Scissors or Knives to Someone You Like
       

First write the treatise on the causes of the giving
way of walls, then, separately,
                                      treat their remedies. Let the uncut mood
clutter up. Let the let down now

                                          let down their guard again. Go ahead.
Grind your teeth
away each night then wake first thing to sing, sunlight
a local solvent of years, and yet

                                          each day, each minute in it
the old song crumples newly, smoothes
to prose that holds up mirrored
                                          sunglasses to nature, out there

where the hibiscus twists its photographs of flowers,
where we laughed best
and last and made the most of the mint, cups of snow
with our Kahlua.

                              Write night stood
opposite, the only prop. Write how it next subsides
in greater collapse, then how it comes to topple.
                                                                              Then why.

Trouble deepened,
                            yet made it safe enough for finally diving
into what the dearest to him persist in
calling my life, the long deep

clear I steered
of everyone. Clouds straight face
                                this horizon that wants to bring them all in anyway
for a few routine questions. It's not the name in the airport p.a.

but that someone somewhere's calling.

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Copyright © 2012 James D'Agostino All rights reserved
from Slur Ouevre
New Michigan Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission