Puccini's

Arias

as sung by

Maria Callas

at the point (life) when

all the old and boring stuff

becomes weird again,

when (life)

your ears

they are blessed,

they are fountains

giving back the (life) pennies.

The days acquire a richness,

and that is all.

Winter (scratch that) Late August . . .

might belong to Arthur Russell. I'm still deciding.

How Does It Taste?

"Time has taught me a few tricks --

avoiding synonyms, the drawback to which is that they suggest imaginary differences . . . inserting circumstantial details, which are now demanded by readers, into my stories; feigning a slight uncertainty, since even though reality is precise, memory isn't; narrating events (this I learned from Kipling and the Icelandic sagas) as though I didn't fully understand them; remembering that tradition, conventions, 'the rules,' are not an obligation, and that time will surely repeal them -- but such tricks (or habits) are most certainly not an aesthetics" (from a Borges Foreword).

A Painting for Any Room

I do the poetry, you do the commentary