The Line Breaks and Lives By Breaking

A Revision

A poem is more broken than anything—suffering
its presumptive unsayable, its imagery
& other laws that go into making magic

out of chaos. My friend Thomas, a record producer
dead now broke the silence by refusing to sign a contract
with this: “The problem is, I always hear music.

I’m hearing it now, talking to you,” as if to say
refusing was never the whole array of his person.
I miss Thomas and his mind in real time.

No falling back
no springing forward.

Students always want the answer to where
to break the line. Break it when the music
you’re hearing stops—not for good—but just long enough

to hear the beginning of the second music
drift in from the empty ballroom before it fills
up with people who are only there to dance.