Consolingly domestic,
to look at my towels
stacked on shelves
in the closet nearest
the door to the bath.

*

March, addlepate sophomore
who can't decide his major.
Or mercurial poet, swinging
between serenity and tantrum.

*

April, how do you put up with
all the old men leering at you,
saying gimme some of that,
catcalling your innocent beauty?

*

Half-dead from five thousand
nights of train-wrecked sleep,
he clutches at any legal means
to quicken his goddamn pulse.

*

He permits himself
the pleasurable vanity
of reading an old poem
and congratulating himself
on a well-turned phrase.