While governments come and go,
as politicians duke it out
and vulgarity and tawdriness
define the day,
...
I am your quintessential cynic,
he said, I’m a nihilist.
Don’t put me on your speed dial,
Pollyanna, cause my voice mail
...
Sometimes it seems that most of our living,
our experience, is about sifting through
acres of insincerity, inauthenticity,
mounds—no mountains—of rhinestones
...
I like those languages that combine words
with a hyphen, like joy-luck. How I yearn to
be in that club, if the dues are not too high.
...
That night, that night
we watched Roshoman again
on Sundance
for the fouth time even,
...
A proud white butterfly
desired to be the most beautiful,
the most envied of his species.
He rubbed against the reddest flowers
...
I always dread to see the first asters
and the goldenrods,
those flushes of cornflower blue
and tawny plumes
...
His greatest fear
was what we all fear:
that love has passed him by,
or that what he thought was love,
...
Comes a time
when past actions seem so foolish
to us now and we tell ourselves resolutely
that had we to do it all over,
...
From what do you wish to be saved:
from yourself, from wickedness,
from mediocrity, sickness,
from being deprived, or depraved?
...