These simple rules to live within - a black pen at night, a gold pen in daylight, avoid blue food and ten-ounce shots of whiskey, don't point a gun at yourself, don't snipe with the cri-cri-cri of a @3becassine@1, don't use gas for starter fluid, don't read dirty magazines in front of stewardesses - it happens all the time; it's time to stop cleaning your plate, forget the birthdays of the dead, give all you can to the poor. This might go on and on and will: who can choose between the animal in the road and the ditch? A magnum for lunch is a little too much but not enough for dinner. Polish the actual stars at night as an invisible man pets a dog, an actual man a memory-dog lost under the morning glory trellis forty years ago. Dance with yourself with all your heart and soul, and occasionally others, but don't eat all the berries birds eat or you'll die. Kiss yourself in the mirror but don't fall in love with photos of ladies in magazines. Don't fall in love as if you were falling through the floor in an abandoned house, or off a dock at night, or down a crevasse covered with false snow, a cow floundering in quicksand while the other cows watch without particular interest, backward off a crumbling cornice. Don't fall in love with two at once. From the ceiling you can see this circle of three, though one might be elsewhere. He is rended, he rends himself, he dances, he whirls so hard everything he @3is@1 flies off. He crumples as paper but rises daily from the dead. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ASIAN BIRDS by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS by RUDYARD KIPLING A DESCRIPTION OF A CITY SHOWER by JONATHAN SWIFT ON THE DEATH OF DR. SWIFT by JONATHAN SWIFT THE FAIR THIEF by CHARLES WYNDHAM NORTHWARD FLIGHT AT DAWN by GAIL BROOK BURKET |