God, what’s wrong with us? What’s so god-damned-funny 
about answering a phone. 
I’m visiting—it’s your and Paul’s apartment—that’s part of it.

You’re in the same room with me. Making faces. After
eyebrow-raising me into answering Paul’s line. Paul, already blind,
is three floors down, sunning his reed-thin body

au jardin. You (later) explain, the renovator lined up for the master 
bath, Paul’s latest project, worries, phones a tad often. 
This city, aglow with young men 

looking in on each other. 
Two days in a row when Paul’s boxy Bakelite rrrrring–rrrrings 
your eyebrows beckon me to pick up. 

Yesterday, best I could muster,
“Pa-ulll’s—not—heeere—may I taaake—a mes-ssseeedge?” 
Today, I shoo your giggly eyes away—bite my lip. What was 

so funny? Under the circumstances: in less than a year 
Paul will be dead. Then, the young designer. You, 
who escape this plague 

but not a slow-moving cancer, gone in twelve. 
I’ll tell you what’s god-damned funny:
there’s no rationale—everything’s both:

“okay, Mister Death, be right with ya…soon as we polish off 
this ringy-dingy joke.” 
Until then, we rarely lost the alchemist’s bet. Life’s daily dose 

of awkward remixed:
ruffled hair, tour jeté, high kicks. Somebody—
slide down a table, pull out a horn, 

polka-dot hanky, 
brass clock. Fly like a goose: 
flap your arms—Don’t look.