I fear the vast dimensions of eternity.
I fear the gap between the platform and the train.
I fear the onset of a murderous campaign.
I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea.

I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee.
I fear the books will not survive the acid rain.
I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane.
I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be.

I fear the bad decisions of a referee.
I fear the only recourse is to plead insane.
I fear the implications of a lawyer’s fee.

I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain.
I fear to read the small print of the guarantee.
And what else do I fear? Let me begin again.

The dread, always, 
of coming to this: 

to sit 
day after day 
chain smoking 
in a soiled undershirt 
beside the cracked window 
of a fifth-floor walkup 
on Railroad Avenue 
with stains on the wall,  
dead flies on the sill, 
no hot water, 
and the cold water rusty; 

to sit 
smoking and coughing 
watching dust settle down, 
freights rumble by, 
and beyond the tracks 
the river flowing 
gray and tedious 

while on the other, 
the opposite, shore 
the distant lights 
of someplace else  
rise up in a glory 
more awesome than Rome 
and now unreachable 
as anyplace anywhere.

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts the snow
The lower chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
‘Come out! Come out!’—
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether ’tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.

Either you’ve died, or you arrive
beside me at a funeral

patchily reaching out
from your zero gravity chair

to grab the relative achievement
of my stomach.

There is no cute life in me
but I have eaten a great meal

alone successfully, greater
than I have ever kept down before,

full of iron and clotted cream.
I cannot feel everything about you

anymore the way I used to—
the stomach overfills itself so fast

it eats the hunger and the mouth.
I grow enamored of you as an egg

you shake in my direction
then love you evenly, without belief.