It would be easier
if an angel would come
down and tell it like it is,
either "You're doing all right" or
"You're fucking up," an angel with a
Gothic name, Sebastian or Rudolpho,
looking like the organ in the Bath
cathedral, tall and full of pipes,
his face to high to see
the voice come out

It would be easier
if houses had signs on them,
like stores: instead of "Bing Cherries 99
cents a Pound" or "Lawn Rakes on Sale this
Week Only," or "Our Flowers R Blooming,"
you would have "Young Couple: Very
Much in Love," or "Breakfast Alone
is a Formidable Endeavor."
It would be easier
if the rhetoric of music
and poetry were the same,
if words could be called blue notes,
and grace notes and devil's intervals, if there
were major and minor poems, novels in the
dorian mode.

It would be easier if someone
had read Goethe to me in the womb,
of it I'd been raised by wolves, or both.
It would be easier if I could simply
market this as a screensaver,
where it would float
all night and during
leisure hours.

It would be easier,
and ever so much
more joyful, if everyone were like
my friend who said, "This hand is better
because it has more
scars."