I can’t just be tracking the lapses,
the deprived and lovelorn about to leap from the ledge,
leaving out the feathery transient random
melodies, some centuries old,
whole symphonies that still stir that stew of fantasy
and biology somewhere inside the calliope
we call the senses. And what is it about
being naked, for example, that made Whitman crazy,
made him a peacock display of self-pleasure?
And why can I still see him ghostly on the ferry
rubbing against strangers who think his touch accidental?
You can almost hear Methodist hymnals inside them
as they look for a property beside the grave site
they’re entitled to, to save them from this mindful business,
when all those other tenses—those jobs and promises
and bruises flake away like rust on a barge
before it’s repainted that toenail shade of red. So
we must go out to sea, the boundless, bountiful sea
of old literatures, with which we imbue
water imagery—I say imbue because I write for myself
and strangers. I try to shape my strangeness
with speed and gravity, the confusion
you uncover just getting to unknow yourself, the part
that’s celibate and monklike, without the flies around it.