On Leonard's 80th Birthday


Old?
I used to think 80 was old.
Leonard is 80 today and I did not think
That one day verses would flow still.
I just did not think.

Leonard thought for me.
Even though I did not know his women
I felt them in my mind,
One especially, terribly beautiful,
Glancing her lips from a typewriter.

Leonard mourned for me
Somewhere in the background,
The erect ponderous excuses
For my absence from being myself
As if only he knew the secret.

His words just make you depressed
My learned friend declared.
What did he know about suicide?
Do semi colons lead to death?
Oh Canada, my dream, his passport

Everything is all right.
The missingness is the very purpose.
Every line is a fruity sentence
Sliced thin to puncture a brain
Unwilling to see, never to hear.

I do remember but not much,
Only about the midnight choir,
A drunk and the singular bird
Sitting on a telegraph wire
And never mind about those numbers.

ROMA, 21 9 2014