I

In Sunday School, today,
I heard the most intriguing lesson:
"Thou shalt not kill."

Now, I'm a changed man.

II

Jerry Seinfeld on the payphone
says, "You can't hurry love."

"But," I ask,
"What if you just want to sleep with her, then run?"

"Oh," he quips, "so you're a runner?"

I look at the script.
He's right.

III

I lured myself to sleep with the thought
that there was nothing new to say
under an orange sun, and that
Eliot had stolen the last good poem
left to write (which explains something
about my low wages).

But, waking to the buzz of a midnight fly,
I discovered at least one idea—
How An Urn Changed My Life.

IV

On the day I discovered I was not alone,
I walked into one of the two-hundred-and-fifty-six
pawn shops on Salt Lake's State Street,
thinking that this was where all those lost dreams went.

I asked, "Do you have any epiphanies?"
The shark studied me with an eye glass
and asked, "What for?"

I told him I was tired of never changing.
He cursed aloud.
The last epiphany had gone bad that morning.

V

Just when I thought the world would end tomorrow,
three five-year old girls started dancing to YMCA
on the sloped grass outfield bleachers
of a minor-league baseball park.

I tried to ignore them, while others, curious and unafraid,
joined in, their grins turning somersaults,
until all the girls in the right field bleachers
danced in front of me.

VI

Watching Out of Africa at 3 A.M.,
I am reminded of why I want nothing more
than a one-way ticket to the dark continent.

If the film is right,
nature remains a natural event—

not like the interruption of a WWF commercial,
from which I've learned that wrestlers come from outer space.

VII

Icicles preserved by the accident
of mid-May mountain shadows drip
over green-leaf-spotted frostbite soil.

The reborn oak from which they hang
is even now explaining to God that
the punishment for worshipping the seasons is too much.

VIII

When I sat next to you
on the train to Brisbane,
and asked if you had the time;
when you declined, but tossed aside
ruby sheets of once black hair,
as if to make your two jade eyes reply,
"But I do have poetry,"
I died and was reborn inside of you.