21

I tell myself to think happy thoughts
but can’t think of any: still,

thinking of thinking happy thoughts
helps, sort of putting me on the side

of possibility: not that there aren’t
happy thoughts to think if you think

of all the blessings here patent and
available to thinking: misery comes

up with an image or two that blots
out frail peripheries of joy: wait,

wait: give it a little time, stuff
eases by: wait and see: think

happy thoughts: sharply conceive:
engaged as we are with sex these

sexless days—everybody afraid of
everybody else—I have engaged the

pronunciation of harassment as my
special interest, and I prefer

HAIR-is-mint to

her-Ass-ment

the latter too precise, it almost
advertises what it condemns: I’ll

tell you, language, like nature, will
sometimes just undo itself: what a

narrow strip this walled road is:
shave a micron or two and you’re

off-roading: try to get a whole
stretch out, and you get cut back:

see what it will do and before you
can your speed is broken: I declare

I don’t know what to do with this
thing, these cramps, this breaking

back: oh, yes, typing is not easy
these days, especially for those

already accustomed to computers:
they can’t go back—what? and erase

things or do whole pages over or
type the whole poem over to station

it differently on the page: they
won’t do: their backs are sped: of

course, sometimes they push the wrong
button and the hard stuff dissolves

or vandals tear off with a
computer in a hard drive to fly: I

have nothing to say I can’t take all
day at, because fifty years of yapping,

what have I finalized, not that one
can’t be diffident about finalization:

computers cannot give me back what
I want, which is what neither I nor

the computer ever heard of before:
the happening of something that never

happened, laying it out not so much
that nature can be abrogated as that

its becoming is unencompassed: I’m
sorry, I don’t care about information:

I can make up all I need: