where do poems come from: you may
want to know: have you ever wondered:
do you care about the baby, not the
fetus: if you’re like many people
you don’t care about the poem, so why
care where it comes from, when you
mostly do care about babies and still
would just as soon skip the phylogeny:
wonder which comes first, the motion
of feeling, or the event, perception,
connection: oceanward, you could
say that a rift of motion starts in
the doldrums, forms a progression,
but you can’t derive what it derived
from: what unsettled a bit of air:
was it air’s own weight, a change of
temperature and buoyancy, or did a
wing slice through, or a meteor, or
surely not a neutrino, so tiny: so
what causes anything to start: when
is the beginning of anything, all
beginnings begun: well, that’s it:
there’s a currency of feeling and it
flows as unformed, if noticeable, as
a drive, and describes a form of
itself, or else its energy picks up
some body here or there and marries
itself to that, creating narrative:
motion, going from here to there,
describes a swerve or arc or salience
and that is form: that is the seed
of form, born in the very bosom of
its substance, which is motion: next
to that, tell me what you think of
a sonnet or some fucking cookie-cutter:
I mustn’t become high-handed: I’m
more miserable than most anybody I
know, so don’t take after me: I’m
okay when I’m typing like this, tho:
I’m in motion and the worm I am
extruding has a long wiggle: it
seems to me as I look about that I
know some things well: but they are
about nothing: there is no seedcorn,
there are no potato eyes in my stuff:
my poems come out of a little tug of
rift in an oceanic doldrum: it’s a
tiny little ship, an airship: fog
could drown it, saturate its jib:
who could get to Mars with that: if
I’m not to have a life, at least let
me tell you about it, that is, that
I’m not having it: that will make
me nearly think I’m having it: imagine
a life! of words: better than
nothing, better, better, bitter-bile
better: for what I meant was love:
now, don’t blubber: poor comfort,
such poor comfort: twaddle: