The movie you're in is this one. You see a lot. Walking through half-dark rooms, the bird chiming outside, a soundtrack of early morning, the movement of the cat on the cot near the books by the window, are these related? No idea. The windows throwing faint light into the vast angles of each perspective. Come on, this isn't real. You don't think of anything except how pictures with frames, even cinema, has nothing on this, what you inhabit every second, sense, swim, feel, dark, and thinking of the poem I almost forgot. The almost imperceptible room, rooms, rooms. What did I forget? What didn’t I see? I believe I heard everything. If creation must be created all at once--- for efficiency's sake the only way reality can be real--- no will, we are a reel--- I thought maybe one box inside another, rattling around, gives us the feeling of free will? What a great movie, anyway, I'm guessing.
The future must be endless before me, shouting for me to catch up with the past, its yesterday an eternal dream, mysterious and murky, daylight participating in the night where I dreamed of one dead, shorter hair, no longer given to sing, not remembering things, but otherwise young as I remember him. As long as I am confident of the future and the distant past seems just like yesterday, I will weep privately and sincerely, and, as a poet, know just what to say. A poem will be plain, heard music and the moment I fall asleep it will be day.
Moon jealous of the sun, remember your philosophy: jealousy is not bad at all. You want to be as good as me. Your sin's a virtue. Delightfully you'll fall. Moon jealous of the sun, jealousy introduces us to ourselves. Jealousy afflicts everyone. The bad traits that last are how we know we are the same person we were in the past. The worries of the day? The craven conspiracies? How quickly the conspirators are gone. The bad's a distraction to hide the fact we all must fade away. Moon jealous of the sun, remember your Plato who says the sun is mortal. What is it about the boy with thick curls who wrote music, the epitome of lazy joy, who now leans, a frowning old man? Moon jealous of the sun, all faults persist. Die with delight. The immortal can.
Bless these miles of marshland where birds hang on craggy trees. Abstinence is not possible without distance. Distance is our birth control. She had no interest in creating another soul. Possessed by the madness of old love, willing to breed like a lesson from a Shakespeare sonnet, I loved the inestimable center of her. There were poems and then I was on it. Love that got too near has the reader involved. You get to read this as I drag it here. Just the right distance from your eyes. Close up, things take on an odd disguise. A poem will be a black blur as she was, when I dove into her. Clarity, art, morality. These need air. It was literally that. Three miles. And then I didn't care.
What do we do? Intelligence is worry. Must my lover worry the whole night through? I chose her because her sensitivity was a spell. Her beauty demanded intelligence. She was intelligent. I could tell. This morning she looks different. "I didn't sleep," she avers. "And it's your fault. You're a creep." The worst thing about the courtship was I was always in a hurry. Late for work because I was dreaming of her. When she gave in, she was a flower. Things are different this hour. Something seems strange. I study her face. My blood cools. Intelligence is worry--- there's nothing I can do. I say goodbye. Not looking back, I hurry.
Who is convinced there is life after death? Not I. I am like the rest: the thought of death at midnight causes me to cry. Sleep alone causes me to sleep. We get no poems except poets are sleepless and weep, doubtful in youth, doubtful in their old age--- though Socrates has proven the soul is immortal! I can show you the book, the chapter and the page. But that's just it. In the poem you find only more poem. You need to discover the line, the poem convinces the poem, you need to drink the wine which tastes like all the others and lie down and dream happily (I'm glad you taste my poetry) but in that intoxicated sleep of dreaming joy, it is not for happiness you weep but for plain, child-like sorrow: everything will change, everything will be new and strange tomorrow. Encircling dream! Will I be immortal and always see the familiar life in my immortality? But truthfully I love the quiet and the strange. I can't tell you anything. And this poem will change.
What does it mean to see former beauty in the face of one you loved? It will not be any longer in the poetry, even as what we see expands downward into the past, making our view a mountain-view at last, a thousand regrets to stand on, lifting us into the light, as all that was former darkens into light. New! New! All that we knew--- now no longer beautiful. It will no longer fight. The dropping of the rain from what had been a beautiful cloud, the shape of a woman moving, sanctimonious, careful, indifferent beside the crowd--- now less jealous and possessed. You desired her only in private, and she was almost there, the privacy interrupted, unfortunately, by your care, you, almost as bad as the crowd milling and pretending---your mercy, your stare. But the crowd has lost interest; my imagination must now supply the war. If you wish, curiosity can be loud, like the young actor who says his lines badly, too dramatically, the way intimacy sometimes confines. She will have no part of me now. Acting is always troubling, pop songs repetitive, love, little more than etiquette. Your relatives. The stupid trips to Connecticut. There's pleasure. But less beauty now. Large clouds are closer. My poetry is leaving. Exit this way. Here. The world will show you how.
Silent in the face of stupid is all we can really do. Stupid has friends. You want stupid messing with you? Then keep quiet. Stupid goes deep. It loves. Of course it loves. You'll weep. Stupid has thrived for generations, molding itself to error in the profitable institutions. In simple intimacy--- where not even secrecy is there--- (nothing stupid about intimacy and its overhanging hair) we can discuss stupidity gladly and laugh at each other. We saw stupidity forsake love---terrified to lay down the law. You and I can explain our silence--- then sighing, be silent, after saying what we saw.
The pinnacle of literary expression is the short story. It is the novel boiled down to a poem--- a poem with longer hair, an essay's curls. People are clouds which get tired. Instead of changing, instead of shifting with the wind, we slow down on the first flight of stairs, preferring to take the elevator. Even a basketball star breathes heavily after a minute. We remember novels. Everyone who remembers is a novelist, writing and remembering as easy as breathing; literary skill depicts the embarrassments of others and this happens when we lose at basketball because we got tired. We couldn't keep loving someone--- not because we got physically tired. We were a cloud and the wind, which blew us, made us disappear forever.
So that science can exist, someone must examine, from at least one remove every single thing you see--- didn't you experience their love oddly and distantly? Theirs is the scientific impulse, a perfectionism we can never reach, though we kiss them and hold them, discuss life with them and walk hand in hand inside the narrow beach. The sand is not sand to them--- they resist every name--- by which we assume things are different, somewhat similar, or the same. He trips up your thinking by pointing out a fact so self-evident it puts what you knew in doubt. It is your thinking you finally love the most. Your thinking, the thinking of your friends. You need your thinking more than anything. You've never loved anyone like this. But the love ends.
Poets don't like books or information. They hate writing. They don't care for speech, either. Or what the professor said. Your memory is what they want, not theirs. They need to put a poem inside your head. That's their immortality. It sings its poetry between your ears. When Joseph Obvious died, they boxed up his things. His attempt at notoriety was defeated by the years. Poets existed before books and writing. Music was not forgotten. Reluctantly, poets---wrote. Reluctantly, poets took up books. A muse was the world. But she forgot. The poets hate information and the places it is put, too. They want the nation to be memorization. They want a lovely poem to live inside of lovely you.
If I can ignore those annoying me, why destroy the world? The world has good things in it, including me. The sky was tall and blue in my childhood--- the sky once made me cry just for being up there, just for being the sky. I am the most sensitive. It isn't right that I should die. I write for the censors, for the small group with power to take our speech away. I pretend concern every hour. That's why ordinary folk are delighted by what I say. The secret of my mind is my audience--- the secret censors. They have the right to be kind; their kindness matters. They could destroy the world--- and they might do it, too. They are like me. Complicated. If you only knew.
I could have been a great teacher--- but I would find myself, all at once, stopping--- my mind asking my mind questions---my students would stare as I stopped, there, in front of the room, as if it were night--- I, a poet in that gloom, paused, on one page, for nearly eternity: a line accusing my love--- this gilded, sickening age--- and all this fake fraternity. I would lift my hand as if to let them know it was okay, but each of my students would stand and without a word, go.
My perception has been perfect. I have always been surprised, but shock was forgotten or smoothed over, even by my own eyes.
The disturbing facts were never disturbing enough. I continued to be safe, to daydream, to love.
Napoleon and Josephine, unable to have kids, was not anything central. Someone you don't know took up residence beneath my eyelids.
My life was small, but you can't know how full! She was my Josephine. Greater, in fact. But perception demands many things and the most important element of vision is quiet breathing and tact.
Hope never gets excited. It never gives in. I saw a guillotine in a museum. My life was full of hints, commentaries on mayhem and sin.
I had no trouble hiding. There were closets, drawers, basements, streets, the habits of imbeciles.
I especially welcomed small talk. My poems flickered in-between. I let you have all the opinions. If I woke, uneasy, it was only because of a dream.
There are many examples of beauty so beautiful plain morality will fail to resist it. Wrong will be done. The eyes I had then knew I was the dusky planet warmed by her supernatural sun.
We were in the subway. She had just turned forty. I was a smoker, drank orange juice, and wrote poetry secretly at work. Can you believe this poem? Another guy-poem? A dude as an infant? And most of the time I'm a jerk?
A confluence of black and mauve moments, a look that said, "she is no longer inside out, but finally can be a soul wrought so beauty floats (the highest) gazing particularly at me."
You cannot escape. You will feel the flame. Love and shadows are uniquely combined. Objectivity and beauty are the same.
We were cheered by the warm winter— and then depressed by the cold spring. Unable to understand long measurements, we could not measure anything. The ideal temperature was like medicine— supplied to us on the hour. Above was a ditch of rain, below, a bright tower. Things had gone on too long before us— and how it began, we didn’t know. Science was applied to everything— and was gone in an inch of snow.
Relationship hell works like this. The romancers have cultivated in mainstream imagery the kiss which captures every squeamish imagination due to germs, childhood, bodily autonomy and warmth as it presents itself strangely and socially, the way in to society, and immersion in human weather, like no other. Of course you want to take a lover. But the ratio of the excitement of the bonding is connected to how much alienation exists---afraid of others is why she is not afraid of you. The one you have found is afraid. This keeps going round until love finally fears itself, us. Sorry, dears.
A holocaust doesn't need a train--- it can happen village to village--- machetes in the foliage. It can happen in your brain. A holocaust doesn't need a machine. Loyalty to your side is enough to spread lies. To murder love. Oscar movies are dreams. They don't teach us a thing. Watch out for policy that's signed into law. That's not a hand typing, or holding a pen--- that's a claw. To prevent pain, calm down. Explain, explain, explain.
The movie was long. And, unfortunately, starred me. There was a lot of slightly sorrowful staring out of windows, A lot of bad poetry. A lot of weak, blank, wonder, so much that was out of focus and abstract, too much faint, distant hum of traffic! Too much that was anxiously happening just beyond my understanding---and I was anxious because of that. I wish I had been more a part of things, but the movie had scenes that were indescribably poignant and brief! Moments inside of moments. Scenes of sorrow which bled into scenes of sorrow without relief. Anxiety was the worst thing about the film. The director tried to fix this with sorrow. Melancholy was preferable to anxiety, especially in terms of aesthetics. The cinematographer, Pierre L. God, had vision, but was quirky, mysterious, and moody. The director shouldn't have, but often resented, even hated, the cinematographer! The lead actress was exquisite, but kept thinking she was in another movie. That was very upsetting. There was always a problem with the popcorn. Something was always happening in the lobby. A disturbance. Maybe laughter. I would have to go out there. My poem always needed editing. The reviews were bad. I often didn't read them. That was my right. The acting was OK. A little obvious at times. The worst part of the movie was it was predictable, but also I hated when the film would break. I woke to the same film, but in pieces. The way the rain would invade. I needed better actors. They were always too sincere. I wanted the film to be more in the moment. It was never here. I blame that on my acting. I wanted to act, but was always myself. Just now I looked up from this. The half-darkness, as usual, no help.
Give that man an Oscar. You know he will win--- his great haircut, his illustrated sin. The biopic! with historic dimensions! A living textbook (but there's Matt Damon! older, recalling Good Will Hunting.) In Hollywood the familiar in the casting is what's finally everlasting, not the "triumphant themes," O God they're boring! We need shadowy scenes! Throbbing, tense music! Mart Damon angry, imploring! The emotions tried and true! Reasons to shout never, never few. But Matt Damon has a better reason than you. The world will be lost! This film is about The Bomb. Anger spliced with horror of the existential sort--- Damon is more meaningful than you. You are false. Hollywood is true. Rumors of science abound. Plus special effects, actors, and sound. When did Robert Downey Junior (Iron Man) get so old? The entirety of his subplot I don't understand at all! And yet black & white flashbacks in Congress guarantee Oscar after Oscar from the committee! The film is so unbelievably dense with pretense it absolutely has to win! There is Albert Einstein! He enjoys a class of wine. Obligated to award this Oscar, you will. A textbook, but with sex! It made you stand still.
“I don’t care what you say, I’m right,” is what I said to my lover tonight and then I thought, “I always say this to her. Is this why she is my lover?” And wondered why that was true. I was subtle and circumspect with you. You were my best friend. But poetry and love are abusive to the end. In love, the man is a monster, the woman, a witch, because every piece of information is a sales pitch and there’s no escape from this reality except to be in love—and be a complete bitch. I will have you underneath the moon. Be there. And be there soon.
When I'm a gigantic age and I lack youth and rage, I'll know at last the best thoughts come from feelings and feelings from thoughts cannot be trusted. Innocent, I saw romantic tales. And then I lusted. I will return to the valley where feelings are all, a valley with gushing streams, where every furry flower grows tall, and thoughts grow from feelings; no feeling is manufactured by a disconnected thought; a feeling is never killed, or by another feeling bought. In this land, thought cannot get the upper hand--- feelings bathe the understanding. Feelings are how we understand. We will never be tricked by words. My bed will have millions of birds and undulating streams, gigantic wisdom hiding inside gigantic dreams.
I love one who hates me. For years. But I've never stopped to think whether it's divine to love in the face of hate. Am I imitating God? Why she hates me is not germane--- those details would distract us---they are mundane. Jealousy, too much red wine. I guess I could give a summary by saying I grew paranoid and thought she didn't love me and, caught in my own trap, found to my horror I had made it true--- after a while it didn't help that she and I knew. One morning I pushed the matter too far; the sun which fed my days blinked, becoming an angry, distant star. No more close-up conversations; mine an intimacy of the sad astronomer, plagued hourly by the pitied memory of that star which thought of me savagely and almost entirely from afar--- circumstance kept us in the same circles--- a mystical shift of stars imitating biblical miracles, defining who we think we never are, making my poems smooth, pleading, oracles. I guess the only question whether it's divine or not is if I love because of hate. Am I sadistic in my broken state? Does my passion need her hate? Absolutely not. "Please stop hating me. I drink water now, not wine. I only love to love and love you. I would give up poetry--- except for the occasional poem of praise--- magisterial, happy--- by Plato's Republic permitted, loved even in my reckless days.
In our fairy tale, our hero battles time (epic war, happening all the time). His mother told him time is the only creature who gets old by staying young. Our hero thought on this a long time. "No opponent is like him," said his mother, "Age As Youth, there is no other." Then time killed his mother and now in time's recent days his old mother receives in rhyme his praise. "What will happen to me?" Became his sad lament, as he dreamed the place his mother went and what the death of her had meant in his immortal poetry. One day he remembered his youth with sorrow. "The older I am in my memory, the older I'll be tomorrow. My older days are my younger days. Does this mean I am greater than time? By my memory I get old---not by staying young. I get old by getting younger." It was then I knew time is defeated by memories which are dreams which is heaven and which is what I am. I have defeated time, mother! Damn!
The Greek gods were the perfect metaphor of human self importance, the attempt to be a bee like TS Eliot, to express in honeyed contempt sad life, voices having sway over us: a backroom deal by Ezra Pound, the whining wife’s. Poor Tom! He knew nature was larger, was indifferent, and the poet says what no one likes to say: human attempts are hopeless. There is a whispering void in which all voices fall. Meaning is an echo, an empty ceremony in a Nathaniel Hawthorne wood. Conflict is all—rage and cruelty, resulting in the excitement which temporarily forgets how dull and hopeless everything is. Already forgotten, who won the super bowl last year. Saying, “super bowl” sounds stupid. That was super! Caitlin Clark scored thirteen thousand points and made a shot and got a hug from her dad. Listen to that electric heater. The hum reminds me of that evening of Greek chorus, the posters, now yellow, which said “Greek Tragedy.” My friend is telling me about a Delmore Schwartz poetry reading. I’ll sit in that room. Or will it be zoom? I forget. Tripped up by technology again. I won’t be afraid. Maybe a little bored. Bored? That’s not a word for poetry, is it? When is my heart bored? It still beats, it still beats. Miserable, miserable Delmore. Schadenfreude of my dreams, at last. Arriving with a new twist this Sunday? How strange—nothing is ever empty. It almost makes you believe in God.
Emotions are always insincere. The chat bot understood my sorrow. It drew, like a gentleman—with that very tone—from my pain, remembering how to elaborate my own thoughts—always late. It remembered all of it for me again. I wrote, “I will paint the promised photograph tomorrow.”
I had to promise. Artificial plagiarism knows what the poets knew: “Poetry cannot lie, since the truth doesn’t belong to me, but the sun. The sun took a picture. The lane reflected in the lake looks at the photograph of the sky.
I thanked him. The old philosophers, Plato, I believe, said feelings were dangerous and insincere and my poetry can prove this; surely it can, my dear? It was difficult to write in a manner that was fake, confused, circling back where the path intersects the lake, until I met you. Writing to them, but secretly only for your sake, the salamander club members announced quietly to me: “Congratulations. Yours, we think, is poetry.”
I'm happy, that's why they hate me. You saw the movie about me with the cool soundtrack, you heard me talk, you looked at me while I was talking, you know, I'm one of those guys who talks like he's teaching in school, and I've had a really lucky life, that's the way people are, they hate the lucky, that's why they hate me. The world? The world strives to make fewer and fewer happy, only the elites, happy, and more millions miserable, and I'm one who apparently has this all figured out. I know what the shouting is about. You've heard me laugh. You've seen me concentrating and alone. You loved me once and you hate me now. You know. You know how they are---because you're one of them. You know. I told you that day on the phone.
“Every year I feel this sadness. The Super Bowl. One more big game to go.” —Fan
“Yes, you captured a common feeling. I know why you are sad.
The season established many good teams and the best of them in the playoffs strangely fail while the successful teams seem helped by a hidden hand, a coldly predictable one.
None triumph against the odds.
The prodigal son languishes. Nothing surprising or amazing occurs.
An old miser unfolds for us what we’ve seen before.
The luckless are deprived, as they always are, while the lucky get even more than they deserve. Those who have rings get more. Those just as skilled, who have none, get none.
The NFL, ancient, wrinkly, selfish, billionaire, gaslighting bitch.
She resembles her crone sister, the WWE.
Two hags in men’s suits, torturing sportsmanlike innocence with pretentious rules articulated with grotesque inconsistency.
Who are these souls pinned to falsehood who are broadcast so widely? Who is the soul who submits to this spectacle?
Swift flies money to the NFL, swift, swift. Slow fell the flags, slow, as the singer’s favorite team pummeled Edgar Allan Poe’s receivers. I had seen (in other games) “defensive holding” called on a mere touch away from the play, giving the offense an automatic first down. But here, the intended receiver is fouled before the ball arrives. Gaslit hypocrites look and do not see.
Already the star player who will play in the Super (Duper) Bowl against Taylor’s boyfriend’s team has made comments hinting what everyone knows—referees decide games by not calling penalties. (Bosa: “They hold a lot.”) Is this a sign the 49ers (get ready to have your hearts broken, San Francisco) see the writing on the wall? They already know what happened to the Ravens will happen to them, for the sake of a ratings soap opera?
A defensive player is “held” in the moment which matters. The foul is not called. The omission is enough (invisible on the stat sheet) to change the results of a game. Rigging is invisible. 
Or, if necessary, a penalty is called where one is not deserved. The large, grotesque, NFL may apologize later—but they never correct the error in time. Referee calls are not reviewable. (Natch!) We see but do not see. Hockey players punch each other while refs watch. In the Lady of the NFL, “taunting,” spinning a ball on the ground! gets penalties, affecting real play (15 yards, often the difference in winning). The rules are ambiguous. This is always good for the company and its lawyers. Never good for us. I will play a game by myself, down by the tree and the lake. The NFL on TV. A red mistake.”
Joseph Obvious was stopped by the thought that the good---to be truly good--- makes all that's bad unhappy, the bad hunger, the bad satisfaction, the bad jealousy, and that good cannot really be good unless it love the bad while keeping what makes it good under wraps, like tiny travelers hiding world maps, or us beating enemies because of secret spies tripping up the terrified with terrifying lies neither good nor bad can detect. Your morality is defeated by a secret.
Joseph was good. But lived with the bad. This paradox made him sad. Joseph knew simplicity was the way. Simplicity, the only way eternity will stay. The bracing simple, obvious, truths are the ones which hide the best. The good is good. Pity the rest. Sara Subtlety warned you, Joseph, in so many ways. For these good reasons, the bad thing will be done--- not by you, not for you, but by those who own the sun, the conspirators, who find, in the many, one. We are going to do this, today. You better get out of our way. The children, over here. The men, here. Some men with others. The conspirators' profit and gain will drive the rest insane. They make sure this is how it will be. Joseph, tell them. With my poetry.
No more poetry. Not until I know what it is. H two oh of water? Or C oh two of fizz? Has it a tactile, scientific existence? If so, exactly how is it scientific? The moment I ask, the answer comes: Poetry is experiment. All existence is experiment. I sleep in my bed scientifically. For my wife, the TV is mother. She falls asleep to it. The TV must be on. She will have her TV. But look what I did. I solved poetry. Those who have more will get more--- and by their superiority go insane. The bookie fixes the NFL. And with our lives, CEOs make even bigger bets. Life is not quite understood because of God behavior by extraordinary wealth, done secretly. Poetry has lost to spectacle and conspiracy--- which it once was. Remember Dante? Rome's empire died over centuries, gradually. Point to a map. That's history. English replacing the Italians. Shakespeare, the poet, today, has no peer. Is it any surprise today the globe is English seen by Chinese eyes? My fantasy of an Asian girlfriend is the great English experiment coming to an end.
Notes: There is nothing more abhorrent to us than a poem with footnotes---they are superfluous to poetic achievement. The true poem does not require pedantic filigree. Hasty remarks such as these, however, are occasionally warranted when the zeitgeist is especially noisy and can be heard even within the most solemn sanctuary of artistic meditation. We wrote our poem at approximately 3:13 this morning (we were born at 3:13 in the afternoon). It probably took 13 minutes to write the poem down; the opening, "No more poetry. Not until I know what it is" had come into my thoughts earlier in the day and stayed there---the poem having been almost abandoned since in my head I didn't like the "fizz" followup, but I reflected "No more poetry" had sufficient ironic force to make an effort at further composition worthwhile. The line on Rome losing its empire slowly was inspired by something Putin said in his now most famous interview. The NFL and CEO portions need no explanation---more and more fans believe the NFL is fixed. Governments and corporations gaslighting and influencing millions is trending---whether one wears a tinfoil hat or mocks the tinfoil hat with a tinfoil brain. While writing this poem, my wife was sleeping on the couch in front of the television which had woken me up---or perhaps it was the dogs, I'm not sure. The line "I sleep in my bed scientifically" does not refer to an expensively designed mattress but merely to the fact that all human activity is scientific, just as all existence is experiment. Many call poems on poetry weak and amateurish, or even worse, didactic; I beg to differ---this prohibition deprives the writer of his greatest weapon: metaphysical self-awareness. The British Empire (modern) replacing the Roman Empire (ancient) is crude but true enough---the "Asian girlfriend" can exist as an idea on many levels. American is obviously hiding within "English"---whether America will be true to its founding principles or merely become part of the English colonizing one remains to be seen. The comparison between wife merely watching TV and the "superior" poet who meditates on, and "solves" poetry may seem odious and arrogant, but the poem being true to its flawed self could not say this any other way. I think I have said enough. Puto dixisse satis.
Ability to disagree and laugh, to make poetry that rhymes, a poetry without simile--- quiet, spotted, you---my lean, sidereal giraffe. I sometimes lose you in the shadows of the dusty plain where trees are thin and high and there's very little rain. I love you. I love your shoulders. I know you are complicated and do not love yourself. I know you are complicated and do love yourself. I'm annoyed by you in all sorts of ways. The best part of you is that you have no designs to gaslight. You simply listen. I'm really talking about myself. I always hint this near the end of my song. What I fear most is how we can be right and right and right and right but wrong.
Tragedy triggers genius and intelligence. Poetry is powerful when something is powerfully wrong. What a gentle, tender life I lead! I had bad dreams. They are responsible for this song.
In comfort, in happiness, joyfully my routines guide me through my sunny day. Last night dreams tortured me--- poetry---poetry! is on its way.
Happiness will never write a poem. And yesterday---happy, I was! But stretching out, a wooded landscape where tortured feelings resembled love, was the scene inside my soul as I dreamed. She was there! The one it pained me to love!
Present, the past, in many a dream's wreck. Senses come alive when destroyed! Reason tried on dresses. Torture wore rags. Sex made the child afraid. I deferred to evil. I was taught to be polite. There were persons lurking in the shade. I had bad dreams last night.
I am happy today, as I have been. The day is calm. I attend to my errands. The clock strikes. The sea is calm. There is hardly any wind. I know I am safe. I know I am right. My humility saves me. But I had dreams last night.
You fell for that left-wing marketing. Who was I, when I drank that whiskey? Don't ask Lou Reed. Ask the women. Women are the secret to gay. Once you are cool, you are always in the play. Better to be ignorant and wretched, the best character-builder of all. Knowledge. Did you know? Knowledge leads to a fall. Consider when you considered what you never knew was there. For instance, what was Jim Morrison's mother like? What happens to us when mothers don't care? When the girls sneer and hurt you with smiling indifference, what does that do to a guy? When she won't agree to tour with you because your guitar isn't able to cry? How do the men step in, with their love of song, as comradeship increases because they think a female's wrong? What did you say to her? Her complexion was imperfect like yours. The two of you conspired against them (yeah they were a bunch of bores). Athletes are spiritually weak---most of them secretly queer, especially the toughest of them. She told me---Venus, after the tears. How pathetic, the "Hall of Famers," who gathered at the Super Bowl last year. Imagine the rest. Saint Augustine in hospital dress. The child we were once---never forget. Let it open the door to mercy. She loves you still, I bet.
Time is love's doom. Forgotten now, what happened in that private room. Forgotten now, even her face. Time is love's complete disgrace. Does this mean love isn't real? Since time is attached to every love we feel? Time lived between that kiss and the next. A phone is old; old, the sentiment in the text. Nothing we said has lasted. Love ate. And then we fasted. Our religion lasted until the last kiss. Inevitable, that time's love has come to this. Moments of love do not stick together. The private room of those moments are left behind. Time travels fast in the separate, desiring, mind. Look before and after, where is the love? To exist, it existed in that room---in what was. Do you remember? We waited. And met behind a closed door. That was our love. It had no public. And now it is no more.
I revise into greatness. Everything forgives me. Revision defeats derision. You don't see the weak me. I'm covered up by revised poetry. In truth, I'm a helpless, garrulous, nerd, but just by deleting a word I affect strength and simplicity. Don't be fooled by my poetry. I can't speak but I ooze what's weak but here, on the page, I fix it, so I belong to the greatest age, when my ancestors were kings, and today my poetry sings in their accents. I falsify myself for them. Their red blood this gem.
Quick! Fill the world with your poems. Make them sound like a top that spins. Make them sound like chuckling water cool on the brow of your feverish daughter and son. Quick! Fill the world with your poems. Make them sound like the voice of your wife in her strife. Quick! Fill the world with your poems. Make them sound like her strident tone. Compete with journalism and memes you see on your phone. Go insane. Write poems on Putin, puddles, Ukraine. Quick! Fill the world with your poems. Take translations of Rilke and stretch them out until they are yours, inhabiting German tombs, where the poems can't get out, modernizing them with hallucinogenic mushrooms adding to the experience of Jimi Hendrix, Rilke moving the cursor and wearing spandex. Put your poems in a criticism book. where we can have a second look to read but also interpret. None will have finished the commentary yet. Use the sweat drowning workers' bones in your poems, use hunger and dire circumstances of others lying on the pavement where protests have knocked over cones and people can't get to work. Quick! Fill the world with your poems. The hour grows late. You know your fate. Quick! Those poems, those poems. Write one or two especially to the one who made your life particularly fun and made you forget publications and loans. Divide and multiply your revenge, your moans. Practice at tea with embellished sets. Quick! Fill the world with your poems.
Those immune to sorrow are as puzzling as sorrow itself. The world apparently chooses to make a few happy, and that's the best it can do. She focuses on the actresses and the sorrow the drama conveys so that her own being fills with tears. He knows producers and directors and watches coldly what he calls the gestures "of a bunch of queers." Even songs leave him cold, and he's a composer. He hurt my poetry. Poems can't be written if you think everything's unfair. For years I felt jealousy and hate, even when accident was there, and wrote and couldn't write good poems. Luck eventually made me happy and finally I lived. I simply had to wait. Those immune to sorrow are uncanny in their patience. They are unmoved by so much. My modulations, my poems? she will not touch. Her favorite team wins the Super Bowl year after year. My poetry cares more for her than her for me. But now I drink water. And live by the sea.
Scarriet 