FIVE POEMS

What You Call a Thing

Without the advent
of Stockholm Syndrome,
how could I have
learned to love myself

so much? I’m asking God
and New York, can anyone
help me? (An all-but-audible

“or else.”) The captain’s chair:
it’s beginning to smell
a little too much like me. Again.
But there must be more

punishing consequences
imaginable, right? I noticed,
for example, you know

the one, a boy prying his way
through the trash piles along the river,
looking a lot like the last time
I saw you, but blind

instead of dead. (I dug
my own grave; I used it
for someone else). And there it is:

When all you know is the woods,every controlled burn is a forest fire.Or it matters what you call a thing.But not for very long.