I stole every word I ever wrote
from a worm inside my head.
After all these years she still lives in my brain
in a bed and breakfast, others put up
their worms in the five star hotel,
The Imagination. My worm is often silly,
she loves pronouns, adverbs,
she plays with hes, shes, its.
She says, “Friend, you and I
became, were born together. At first
your head was a cradle, rocked me.”
Truth is my worm never lets me sleep,
she forces me to dream, nightmare,
she and I rise in an instant.
When I spoke of revolution, she said,
“I’ll dictate your complaints!”
Her cousins, Suenos, Rêves, Fantasies,
don’t visit, still I know they celebrate overnight
feste in Venice, a flower show in Hampshire.
In the morning, she makes demands,
“Get Mozart, Coltrane, Verdi, Ella, flamenco,
amorous glow-worms
out of your head: I am not the worm
that dropped out of Enkidu’s nose.
I’m your music.”
I say, “Worm, keep rhymes out of my head.”
She stands erect, whispers in my ear,
“There’s a shipwreck in your skull. Mate,
I want to come out of your left or right ear
to see the world. I’ll stop rhyming when you’re dead."
My retort, “Worm! I can hardly hear you—
don’t waste my time. Wordsworth called you
the mind's abyss, unfathered vapour.” Worm demands
in wormy English, “Scrawl nonsense!
Write what I tell you, and rewrite:
I press my middle finger against my thumb,
make an eye, and say, behold the invention
of the eye that is nothing but a shape.
I can make a drum with my hand and bottom,
without permission, I touch my privates, cry Rape!
I must make my death handsome.
I was a poet before I knew where babies came from.
Father told me when I was 10. . . I said, “Let me see you do it.”
Till then, when I wrote “love,” it was counterfeit.
In their bedroom I heard father eating fruit.
I would eat grape jelly, but never eat a grape.
I loved flowers in pots on a fire escape.
Every year on the day my grandfather died
a candle was lit. In my heart, a place inside
it mattered the Soviets made flats of Jewish gravestones,
one day a year, for all the sins, murder, theft, a boy atones.”
Idle reader, I confess: many have their worms.
My worm tells me,
“Your mind was invented so you could forget.
Dying, keep your mouth shut, not agape. Write:
I can rhyme Montaigne with champagne,
soon I’ll change, but never become again.”