I think I'll read the next poem.
It's called "Broken Ghazals."
Probably, many of you know what ghazals are right?
It's a form that I don't really know
a lot about but it was developed in,
I think, in Iran, in Persia.
And it's supposed to be two-line stanzas,
each stanza is complete in itself, but a string of them
has a kind of oblique interrelationship.
I call these broken ghazals because although they have
an underlying two-line stanza, I broke up those--
most of those two lines with indentations,
so it doesn't look exactly like a two-line stanza.
But the feeling I was after was akin to what
I take to be the feeling, tone, of a ghazal.
"Broken Ghazals."
"Each life spins into its own orbit, rain of meteor showers,
sparkle of some brittle desire, is it?
The stab of deep pain?
Not without tearing a few fibers,
the magnet forces pull apart.
I. He.
Being is not referential.
I wake.
Instant recollection, a shadow threatens my son's life.
Others slide their elongations toward his spirit.
My being, unconformable to his perception, moves on.
Awake, I keep waking.
He survives and leaves, moving through the apparition
he sees and away from it.
Again waking, I stretch a hand out to stop the warning clock.
Time is another country.
Squinting toward light, a tree has filled it
with green diamonds.
Or there's the air, bemused, new fallen snow.
Shock waves over music I don't hear as you don't hear mine.
How they beat on the sea wall."