"Book Loaned to Tom Andrews," by Bobby C. Rogers

I'd already found out that one of the secrets to happiness was never loan your
 books. But I loaned it anyway. We were all of us poor and living

on ideas, stumbling home late to basement apartments, talking to ourselves.
 What did we own except books and debt? When the time came

we could move it all in the trunk of a car. Tom knew what a book was worth—he
 brought it back a week later, seemingly unhandled, just a little looser

in the spine, a trade paper edition of The Death of Artemio Cruz, required reading
 for a course in postmodernism we were suffering through.

The book's trashed now, boxed up and buried in the garage with a hundred other
 things I can't throw away. When I moved back south I loaned it again

to a girl I'd just met. At some party I'd said it was the best novel since Absalom,
Absalom!, which may  have been true, but mostly I was trying to impress her,

and convince myself, still testing all I'd been told about the matter of a book
 is best kept separate from, well, matter. Months later it turned up

on my front steps without comment, the cover torn in two places, the dog-eared
 pages of self-conscious prose stuck together with dark, rich chocolate.

(2011)

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," by Wallace Stevens

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

(1917)

"Old Man," by Neil Young

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

(1972)

"Poem," by Frank O'Hara

Wouldn't it be funny
if The Finger had designed us
to shit just once a week?

all week long we'd get fatter
and fatter and then on Sunday morning
while everyone's in church

ploop!

(1959)

"Name That Tune," Matthew Brisbin

I'm a Secret Agent Man.
Not a Rocket Man,
or a Piano Man,
but a Secret Agent Man,
and I've been Shot Through the Heart with
love's arrow by a Beauty School Drop out.
Her name was Lola and I said to her One Fine Day,
"With Every Step You Take, it's getting Harder to Breathe."
She looked like a Centerfold walking down Electric
Avenue.
and as she walked she was Singing in the Rain, that
Sunday Morning.
She said, "It's More than a Feeling you get from this
Sentimental Mood.
Because It's Summertime and you're my One and Only
Love."

There's Something Sexy about the Rain
falling over the One I Love. But it's so hard
to Steal My Kisses, while she's French Kissing Life
Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
It's that Typical Situation when I'm Hanging by a Moment
and she's Never There to Build Me Up Buttercup.
"There's No One Like You. Won't you just Stay with me?"
"Is this Love?" she asked,
"I'm just too Easy to Love and I Don't Get Around Much
Anymore."
With that, she left to go Somewhere Beyond the Sea in a
Yellow Submarine.
And Here I Go Again On My Own down life's Yellow
Brick Road.