2.    "A. U. C."

in the heyday of poisoning
your death would adumbrate your life

a poet's meticulous starvation
verse by verse, like the nightly tapering moon

or letting one of the several addictions
Lethean tributaries, sweep you awry

or rail against the misery-blackened bricks
till you pull down a heap on your head

now anyone can perish impressively
poets wind up immured in universities still screaming

with the black cat of respectability on one shoulder
i want to live between two bare curbs

taking my chances with random vehicular modes
of ambiguity: this plague year

when its very mention is forbidden
i'll push a wagon crying, "Bring me your dead!"