IDEA

summer: brutalized by the Roman sun

reduced to weird circles 

out and back again

with badly-planned groceries

    my books are sleepy

    my head is hot and dry

like Keats and Shelley before I die

(though I do hate

to repeat myself) it would be nice

to sing unselfconsciously 

like some kind of bird:

that is the exact idea

if not the most precision wording

but I’m talking about freedom goddammit

freedom to be obscure

and from within that obscurity

to rob empires

emphatically not talking about those freedoms

always referenced by Americans

as having been died for

by soldiers

listen:

as we are learning now

those were always very low-utility freedoms

but you, Laura, with your medical knowledge

with your fresh laurel

di Padova se non erro

and delicate hands

if you could just kill me, perform the operation,

then bring me back

such that 

some kind of bird

like that one I often heard

in the Protestant Cemetery

(I’m willing to fly to Rome

for this;

we'll do it in the graveyard)

might rise from the chaos

just to hang out

and be itself

...I bet you anything

it would work

could you read up on that?

I think we should try it