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.

.