Poem-like Substance for David Shapiro

Apology for What I Cannot Keep Afloat

because it’s raining again & the photographs are tinctured

each this blue this disc hanging bright in the tree at dusk

a love poem is like a war or a cartoon or a love beveled

each importance is difficult work & we fly above all & twitch

poems about wars incite warriors, poems about love induce frottage

these truths hard against the sky when I’ve opened every window

the house alone for wielding a fig, a brief history of what

you mean to be alone some more & then a bat flies through it

almost hovering you didn’t see it move or can’t awake be sung alive

the longest continuous stars the eyes of boys yet summertime

flings open shutters & take cameras for windy rides uptown

the chemistry window & the physics window long leg porthole

a modicum of civility injects itself into the military gloss

the night alone above a clouded milkyway of shrapnel to keep

not writing about death to keep the ear canal clean free of blood

today I hurt the feelings of friends whom I love I can’t keep

these fingers shut these dark circles my failures make us concentric