Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

I have been eating poetry.

When we walk in the sun
our shadows are like barges of silence.

These wrinkles are nothing
These gray hairs are nothing,
This stomach which sags
with old food, these bruised
and swollen ankles,
my darkening brain,
they are nothing.
I am the same boy
my mother used to kiss.

Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.

Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.