A Short History of Autoeroticism

I picture the forest but think of my swag.

The birds, metaphorically speaking,

disappear into the venom of the air.

The day is bounded by an asymptote

I think, but I hate myself, the air, the day,

and hate the birds most of all.

The notes of autumn's synthesizer

began to bother me in retrospect.

The winter drew its hexes on the wall.

There are no books to read or write

this afternoon, no poets who can compute

the ratio of obscurity to the sea.

Richard II invented the handkerchief

and he felt very small on that day

when he waved a red square

at a bigger, more ineradicable blue one.