The nights were long and cold and bittersweet,
And he made a song for the hell of it.

She stood by the window, a heavenly light
Who created havoc for the hell of it.

He used to fondle every skirt in sight,
Then he fell in love—that’s the hell of it.

Now there’s a courtyard with an abject knight
Yodeling his head off for the hell of it.

O poor me, my Lady, my hopeless plight!
She married a prince for the hell of it.

Honorable, unsatisfied, illicit—
Why bring it up? Just for the hell of it.

The fever spread from poet to poet
Who burned in the high-minded hell of it.

But the Untouchable had him by the throat,
And he stopped singing for the hell of it.

Love is a tower, a trance, a medieval pit.
When I lost you, I knew the hell of it.

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He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise

We walked on the bridge over the Chicago River
for what turned out to be the last time,
and I ate cotton candy, that sugary air,
that sweet blue light spun out of nothingness.
It was just a moment, really, nothing more,
but I remember marveling at the sturdy cables
of the bridge that held us up
and threading my fingers through the long
and slender fingers of my grandfather,
an old man from the Old World
who long ago disappeared into the nether regions.
And I remember that eight-year-old boy
who had tasted the sweetness of air,
which still clings to my mouth
and disappears when I breathe.

What was is . . . since 1930;
the boys in my old gang
are senior partners.  They start up
bald like baby birds
to embrace retirement.

At the altar of surrender,
I met you
in the hour of credulity.
How your misfortune came out clearly
to us at twenty.

At the gingerbread casino,
how innocent the nights we made it
on our Vesuvio martinis
with no vermouth but vodka
to sweeten the dry gin—

the lash across my face
that night we adored . . .
soon every night and all,
when your sweet, amorous 
repetition changed.

Fertility is not to the forward,
or beauty to the precipitous—
things gone wrong
clothe summer
with gold leaf.

Sometimes
I catch my mind
circling for you with glazed eye—
my lost love hunting
your lost face.

Summer to summer,
the poplars sere
in the glare—
it's a town for the young,
they break themselves against the surf.

No dog knows my smell.