Poetry To Me Is Prayer.

I Sit At My Desk Each Night With No Place To Go, Opening The Wrinkled Maps Of Milwaukee And Buffalo, The Whole U.s., Its Cemeteries, Its Arbitrary Time Zones, Through Routes Like Small Veins, Capitals Like Small Stones.

I Am Stuffing Your Mouth With Your Promises And Watching You Vomit Them Out Upon My Face.

The Summer Has Seized You, As When, Last Month In Amalfi, I Saw Lemons As Large As Your Desk-side Globe-that Miniature Map Of The World-and I Could Mention, Too, The Market Stalls Of Mushrooms And Garlic Bugs All Engorged. Or I Even Think Of The Orchard Next Door, Where The Berries Are Done And The Apples Are Beginning To Swell. And Once, With Our First Backyard,i Remember I Planted An Acre Of Yellow Beans We Couldn't Eat.

... A Starving Man Doesn't Ask What The Meal Is.

I Want To Kiss God On His Nose And Watch Him Sneeze And So Do You. Not Out Of Disrespect. Out Of Pique. Out Of A Man-to-man Thing.