A POEM FOR LANDLORDS

Today I paid my landlord

at the last possible minute

on the last possible day

of the month which is

on the 5th day of the month.

It is the 5th of November, 2012.

Poets hate their landlords.

This is an imperative. It has no grammar.

Maybe it has a crude grammar.

I am not writing the check until

the last possible minute

in my car because I have

so much hatred in my heart

for property and landlords

but not land or streams

since I love the Romantics

since I am also a romantic

when I am not practicing

stupid conceptual poetry

like going to TJ Maxx

and looking at my face.

I have been thinking

of the body of my three-year old

and how it is so new and unstable

and how I don’t want him to ever feel

happy in this world.

I don’t mean it like that.

I want him to feel joy

but not happy in the sense

that he feels content.

I want him to feel

contempt for landlords

the same way that I feel

contempt for landlords

and how I have hated them all

in exactly the same way

which is an abstract hatred

since it reaches into the future

as well as a concrete hatred

since it is right here

in my parked car as

I write this rent check

and how this hatred is sophisticated

in the manner of a Marxist

and how it is unsophisticated

like the juvenile delinquent

I will always be even when

I’m very old because

for whatever reason

that simply could not

be beaten out of me.

So back to this check

I don’t want to write

and writing the numbers

of amounts of money

and my name in cursive

which is the last place

in the world in which I use cursive

and this is also the last place

where I write checks and how

if I don’t do this

I would need

to get a money order

from now on

to pay the landlord

I despise who are all

exactly the same

and whose threats are

all exactly the same.

I do not want to feel this hatred.

My daughter is twenty pounds.

I want to feel joy and I want

my little infant to feel joy

and I don’t want her

to grow to be happy.

I don’t mean it like that.

I want her to feel joy

when she walks in a forest

or by a river looking at birds.

If she feels one day

a “seething contempt,”

I will be proud of her for I shall know

she is my daughter.

I know that I should be happy

for my children

if they are happy.

Oh don’t become tax collectors!

I am writing this so quickly.

Soon Craig will be home

and I will need to breastfeed

and cook dinner.

I am writing this so fast.

I will not be able to look

back at it but just now

I am looking back at it since I made

dinner and cleaned the house

and I am also revising it

and thinking about how

my anger has subsided

because at dinner Ezekiel

told me he kissed

his friend on the cheek at school

and he says it is “okay to hug

a friend but we

don’t kiss friends at school.”

I will post this on my blog

immediately.

It is Nov 5th, 2012.