HIGH JUMPER
Alan
D
never heard you debate
before
never heard you
live before (well
almost)
stuck in your
chair
but
can jump through
the air
plucking out
conclusion
after conclusion
you should have
become a jumper
could have
become a real athlete
an utter
track star
why limit yourself to the law
to the blase life
of a Harvard professor?
when see you debate
I imagine a whole different
destiny
one where you don”t look
anything so ridiculous,
that totally bad.
COBBLERS
I cobbled together
a Mary Shelley
using some
leftovers
from the
fridge
filled her lungs
with a breath
of Romantic poetry
stuffed her brain
until it was set
to burst
with every available
microchip
and soaked her soul in
a loop-feed running of
Kubrick’s
enigmatic
masterliece
that if
this
the genre
she was put on this Earth
to bring to birth
she migjt
glean
enpugh of a gist
for a
pure reboot
remind us
where it
all went wrong
where it
all
returned
to the slime
sank into
slick
death hubris
ALL THIS SPACE
all this space
all this
spaxe!
.
could build a rag
and bone shop
for the
ages
a cerebral
scrap yard
so much brown
brown earth
untamed
land
A DAMN
always
in a rush to
publish
sometimes I leave typos
all over the page
sometimea my
typos
themselves
have typos
sometimes I wonder
when I write
where the Hell
is the poetry
where
is that thing
the poem
not in the world
and apparently
not
on the page
maybe
I should go look
for it
maybe we
should all go
look for it
try to figure out
what the Hell
has happened to it
go
find Dante
he
being the
expert in
such matters
hear it
from hia own mouth
hear it from
all those
voices
the blessed
and the damned
how
small poetry has got
allowed
itself
to get
barred from Heaven
closed off
from Hell
lost
all its real estate
kicked
off its land
nothing big left
to talk about
nobody listening
no
imagination
inspiration
so just shovel that shit put
it
out there
have to
put it there regardless
put it out there
fast and
furious
wrap, drench
the world in it
before it dies
entirely
no time
to worry about
this and that
the dream
of certainty
delusions
of perfection
the time
for care
and concern
has all but
vanished
is long-
time gone
no worry about typos
lack of rhyth, rhyme
missed meaning
what
does not
scan
no one
gives a fig
no one gives a damn
THIRTEEN
woke up
in the middle
of the night
to watch Alan
Dershowitz
debate Glenn
Greenwald
over the absolute
necessity of surgical strike
bombing
the shit out
of Iran
which Dershowitz won
hands-down handsomely by
ultra cogent argument
and
persistent
interruption
and being
a Harvard Man
this being the University
that refused thirteen
students
their degrees
woke up
to watch
Alan
Dershowitz
in an alternate
universe where
they had removed
all the universities
Dershowitz
talking the same old
safe-talk
shibboleth
the clock
somehow gone wrong
gone
hopelessly
intertextual
telling me it is
no time
for peace
for lying secure
in bed
thinking
poetry
already
on the verge
of striking thirteen
CLEAR
on the farm
there are no rivers
there
is no sea
just a fence
that cows from
the next farm
sometimes
trample
down completely
and do
I scour the fields
looking for paper
need to draft a sign
of warning
to prohibit entry
write a letter
to someone
to
separate the sheep
from the goats
the sea
from the land
the real
from
the surreal
keep
boundaries clear
OF THE FITTEST
I like the way
you shot this scene
but what
does it mean
what does
it mean?
why this blocking, these
camera angles, this framing?
what does your cinematography
do for, what is it
doing to my poem?
so much you have to
surrender to reach
a wider audience
sacrifice gleefully, even
ecstatically,
for
your art
to
survive
poems 2 die for