Thursday, June 15, 2017

It Makes You Think


Although you probably too often start the self-talk
in your head the way you’ll try recording it tonight
before you go to bed and run on talking to yourself
some more, which is to say (how many times have
you loved using that phrase as a diving board?)

to try to parse the ways and means involved in your
investigations of Reality that you convince yourself
are far more interesting to you than all the traps
of little lives and flaps of envelopes and scraps
of torn-up letters from your brother or your mother

in the midst of similar detritus that so many others
find spell-binding – it’s here you wonder where
the sentence you began has gone or wants to go
which normally won’t stop the flow but stops the flow
right now, tonight: as if someone had yelled your

name out: Guy! Suddenly perhaps the least poetic
band of three words which you couldn’t force to scan
if you had stayed up all the night to labor at it through
innumerable tries – their syllables add up to nine –
march out as if they were your yearned-for prize.

“Disappointment is egotism.” It makes you think you’re done.
It makes you think you may have found a spiritual practice.
And you’re not going to rhyme another damned thing.



.

No comments: