(after Sarah Manguso)

The darkness of your eyes is a curious darkness.
I mean when I close them. Old dances are equal
in distraction, like the shifts in subjects in a song.
That's just the different voice in a choir, I mean.
I mean, I mean to mean: Meaning from the random
statistical patterns of this... "world"? Is it right
to call everything "this"? "World" seems to mean "here" and yes,
with "us". Like the positivists told the scientists, "yes"
this thing with our eyes-- expansive eyes,
microscope eyes telescope eyes large hadron collider eyes mathy eyes
--these eyes are "I". Would I be comfort,
--and yes, the substance of that word and not the action
that entails the substance being a thing that can be
--would you be comforted by the thing that sees
being the thing that sees you as you? Imagine
some other singer singing that no other such thing
exists besides ourselves. Is that comfort? Is that
a person or a poem? Is everything in that the same? Wonder
with me back to empiricism. Knock on the table
and think of it not as Idea (that beneath our own
that we wished to wish). Wonder
with me on this song, back-of-the-envelope
calculated tipsily, alone, at the edge of a party
--okay, the party of (this) life. Wonder
with me, there, here,
always. And open
your throat.