Sixty Lines for Lewis on His Sixtieth Birthday

no need to count years

we don’t know who signed time’s operating instructions

language works with us

full health care plus tenure

love almost enables, so much else disables

if these sentences ever sound like

homilies from Jenny Holzer

ignore them

decades of true are you

we breathe between the lines, we don’t ruin civilizations

a man whose love launched all those women’s ships

has no name in myth

he must be a secret god

finally some distance from

(you fill in the blank)

true love nest best enabled by rent control

think of all the words we’ve imbibed

Proust wrote from chaise to car

candle to electric

note to phone

now our span: time imagined after regained

clocks reset calendar

too well loved to ever be forgotten

our pots may be scarred but

we don’t overcook our plots

so much drama in our own pockets

haven’t emptied yet

recall Melanesian navigators

charted courses

by the shape of the waves

ripples of the sea

dumb voxless populous buying excessive inflammation

SUVs STDs WTO WMDs

notice how acronyms catch on like leeches?

oops, there it goes, the idea that fled

so as not to be worded. Or vice versa

who would have thought

ayatollah rhymes with granola? (Bob Holman)

do you remember a Brooklyn afternoon

our deepest historical secrets

friendship told not sold

if I hear “Gender is Performed” one more time

me and Katt gonna go cahoots

I noticed a boy on a bench

in an empty courtyard

playing a handsaw

with a violin bow

don’t know why I thought of you

California: yes beauty and many cheerful assistants in

turquoise jackets, redwood drive-thru cool edge

plus the Arnold, “a condom filled with walnuts”

don’t you just love the term, “The Situation Room?”

what doesn’t go on in there?

Thanksgiving 2004 not what we thought

we’d be thankful for, Jamaica travel book says

if bitten, go straight to the hospital

remember to take the snake with you

for identification

China waits patiently

just like you predicted