Study Break And how can this, how should this be? And why does this follow? Where does this lead? And how can this be? I turn ignored To ask the other wall Solid in its same papered indifference But stop to let a spent arm Minister its blindness To word-weary eyes. When is nearly forgotten In all these months of weekdays And must be (if it must be) Coaxed from where it hides In the buried perfumes of high school Mondays And eager, storebought after-shave Impossible, guarded fascinations Since confessed by young brunettes Who kept their lips to cigarettes And their ball points to unwritten pledges Long forgotten, lost and dead At the hands of some less vivid possibility A thousand times unfolded, refolded And spotted by sips of blackberry tea. With the startled threat of sleep The arm grudgingly yields the eyes Again to the walls and the questions That are words typed Not words written From fascination by brunettes Or scented with cigarettes and relevance They merely ask The impossibility of any moment And paper me with indifference. And how can this, how should this be? [first published in the January 1991 edition of Donatio Inter Vivos.]