OCCUPANT
The sad mailbox of my extreme youth, what did it ever deliver? The only...

A CRITIC
Pick up your socks. Clean the house once in a while. Go to the dentist. ...

HISTORIAN
Piles and piles of books, boxes of documents, photographs, bones, shreds of clothes...

YOU WHO KNOW
I was just enough bigger that I could wrestle you into the clean straw of the mow...

GRIFFY LAKE
I spread my smooth water like a lap and caught the trees' faces where they fell...

Dear Eric,

Pick up your socks. Clean the house once in a while. Go to the 
dentist. Start being more sensible about money. If you're going 
to read, make sure it's a book that amounts to something.
	
In general, you mistake lethargy for stability. Your strong 
reaction to discipline is a remarkable point of view. It has 
inevitable and regrettable consequences. A restless mind is not 
necessarily an energetic one.
	
"Today's poetry is a fight for breath." Remember that? Then what 
have you done with the knowledge? There are no easy ways. 
Sentimentality will not do in the place of emotion. Confusion 
is not profundity.
	
Reform your heart. Withdrawal is not the same as solitude. A 
secret held from all others is a stone in the gut. Oysters 
make pearls of such irritants, humans do not. How can there be 
pleasure in isolation?
	
Do you ever vacuum?

A Critic


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