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And this-- I have the
misfortune of getting--

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of having tension
headaches, sometimes

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set off by any old thing.

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And of course they always
strike in the middle

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of the night, which is--

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or rather the wolf hour of the
night, somewhere between 4:00

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and 5:00 in the morning when you
really don't want to be awake.

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So "Headaches."

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Wine again.

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The downside of any
evening's bright exchanges

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scribbled with retribution.

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Stark awake, a tick
throbs in the left temple

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site of bombardment.

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Tortured syntax,
thorned thoughts,

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vocabulary like
a forest littered

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with unexploded cluster bombs.

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No exit except explosion
ripping the branches.

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Stacks of shadowed books on
the bedside table, wall a jar

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of Tiger Balm.

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You grope for its
glass netsuke hexagon.

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Teak stabs, dull pain
supersedes voices.

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Skills, obsessive one
sided conversations.

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Turn from mouths you never
will kiss, a neck your fingers

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will not trace to
a golden shoulder.

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Think of your elders.

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If, in fact, they
died, the interlocutors

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who, alive, recede
into incoherence,

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you would write the
elegy, feel clean grief

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still asking them questions.

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Though you know it's you
who'd provide the answers.

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Auden's old people's home,
Larkin's the old fools,

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are what come to
mind, not Yeats.

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In a not so distant
past, someone

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poured a glass of wine at 3:00
in the morning, laid a fool's

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cap pad on the kitchen table.

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Mind a spark from the long
loquacious dinner two hours

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behind her.

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And you got a postcard of '50s
jazz club next day across town

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where she scrawled, she'd found
the tail end of a good Sancerre

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in the fridge, and
finished her chapter.

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Now she barely knows her
friends when you visit.

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Drill and mallet work on
your forehead, bust up,

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and it is Margaret
you mourn for.

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Get up, go to the bathroom.

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You take the drugs.

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Synapses buzz and click.

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You turn the bed
lamp on, open a book.

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Vaso-constrictor and
barbiturate make words

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in oval light reverberate.

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The sky begins to
pale at 6 o'clock.

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