Sixth Finch

I'm racing to finish this article on Leonardo in this morning's New York Times in the two minutes before my poetry panel begins but I'm also holding the paper in front of my face because I've got something in my teeth from the omlet I had an hour ago at the Astro Diner on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 54th, a piece of onion, maybe, or green pepper, and I'm almost there when the host taps the mike and introduces the panelists and has each of us make a statement and then announces that it's time for Q&A, and as often happens, the first person to ask a question wants to know what advice the four of us would give to an inspiring poet.

I gotta get my act together gotta quit shuffling aimless to and fro down the corridor of this scenario In which I find that I have fallen short of expectations In which I am reluctant to engage In which I am limited by my own faulty coping mechanisms which are characterized mainly by deflection and humour I propose a new tactic a better way to live I resolve not to buy that fancy underwear online handmade by a woman in Latvia called Egretta Garzetta

I wanted to save a hippo but I didn't have a G. Everywhere people destroyed one another and were themselves destroyed while I foccused on that hippo. It was hard. Humans and their many problems, systemic and inherited and otherwise, these all have some sway with me. But that hippo. That hippo.

Imagine the planets conscious of how stuck in a rut they are or rain having to decide if the desert likes it or not or robots who think they look fat. Tulips requesting the sun's permission to drink its light. Oceans that worry they're hogging all the space. A crow that asks another crow, Do you have a spirit human?