! ! This Charm Thing

There are guys who think they have charm and are so confidently wrong that the molecules in our stomach grate together as we watch them get away with it and those who don’t know they have it and are deservedly babe-magnets and what makes you think I envy them and those who know they have it but behave like gentlemen so we try to like them and those who so successfully have it and overuse it that we call upon the Fates and Furies saying hey did you see that guy over there you, I think, Billy Collins know you have it but don’t rate it as important as writing poetry, so one moment, it’s a one-liner waiting for the full second house; another, taking the short cab ride from the Algonquin to the New Yorker smiling secretly but purely from the pleasure of sharing itself; or sometimes, it’s chiselled perfectly on a fragment of smooth white marble lifted out of the Aegean Sea which sparkles timelessly because that’s how it is