he was one of those poets, you know,
the kind who, after causing you to read through —
or, heavens forefend, reading to you —
one or two rambling pieces, mere shards of some shambling thesis,
when you tell him that, although you favor fiction, yeah,
you read it;
yes, you “get it”; and, that
it reveals, yet again, that he’s pathetic,
rolls his eyes and replies, “yeah, I know, but how was the diction?”