Poets in different dimensions
within the same room: One sits
clapping erasers to a gregorian chant.

One from Transylvania, tugs on his left ear
as if nodding to an unknowable
monster: the mad woman

forgetting it was a poetry reading,
entering the room with her flowing leopard scarves
as one confused Bob

with a question mark jacket read his punctuated poetry.
In procession they went, unrecognized
though highly decorated popes:

One playing drums in anger,
an occasional cymbal as escape.
Another engulfed in enough sadness

to leave the only belle he ever loved,
their child drowned in a pool.
(Something his glass eye kept him from seeing.)

Broken, the Guru of all poetics,
waiting for his heartmeds lost in a Denver airport-
as the very last, drunk (now dead)
fell asleep at the podium.