Rob Hack
Other poets he reads at arm’s length.
His subjects chosen the way he towels himself
after a bath or how he catches an apple unexpectedly tossed.
He did watercolours, until someone said Paul Klee.
A letter to Crazy Horse lies unfinished on a desk like an altar.
On windy afternoons he spits beside the incinerator
observes the smoky smoulder of dry grass alight
then the night, and someone brings whisky.
He wakes at midday, wants to piss
sees Ezra Pound smoking at the kitchen table
pulls the covers and lies still.
Through the unopen window, the flitting of birds
the scratch of dry leaf on the concrete path.
He lies unhearing, stares at the ceiling
like an unwashed Michelangelo.