Measuring

We’re watching the sad movie
for the seventh time today.
Let’s take off our tear-vial
glasses and observe: Like
yawns, tears travel
the audience: dumb tears,
Cockney tears, red, white
and blue tears, touching-
only-to-his-mother-tears.
Leaky tear valves fill
the Potomac. Frenchmen
cry into their berets.
Children cry on the metal decks
of ocean liners. I’d like
to cry with you for just
one minute, five short of
the national average for
women, but then again I’m no
average woman. We could
conquer television with our
true emotions, make announcers
weep and ad executives foam