eloquence is a furious hurricane,

it whirls and consumes and turns dizzy

all the known elements
and when it wanes I watch the water

turn to waves in sunset heat…

and so the hurricane goes, it goes in a snap,

and its echoes just slide away…
but they haunt my system until

I’m spread crippled and still,

beset by a self-conscious mind
I’m left alone, sometimes, with the ghosts of this,

of the eloquence that once occupied;

they jeer and they groan as they hand me in bones

this utterly frugal offer:

a steel-grey shroud of cold-frigid air
apparently
it’s some comfort against

the impending reheating,

the slow build-up of hurricane wild
I wait…
the waves reverse the water

the sun rises like a shadow

and I can see it, the prospect: 
of being silk smooth again

of being a slick social delight

and of being another cruisy-witty raconteur

who wraps them all, whatever audience there is,

in a hurricane of crucial hot air