see a penny, pick it up, it’s 2 ¢ (and
the IRS spurned), considering taxes,
village, city, county, state, federal,
school, and sales: I cried out to
the heights in my misery, and the
heights said, cool it, and said,
can’t you see I’m making and colliding
galaxies and stuff and watching the
watches (I mean, clocks) and over
there a 150,000,000-stretch of
light years is turning to plasma and
something is always going off like
popcorn, a peppery popping of suns,
or a smacking of wobbly stones
long-dwelt in speed: so I said,
listen, okay, I get it, cool it: &
just there in that wrung moment I
understood the guiding principle and
started scaring up a little supper:
hey, you never know: you could win
the lottery or your poems could come
in for something, your bone could
harden, or the sun could do itself
in, a quick quieting: I would say,
go ahead, call out to the heights:
it couldn’t hurt: the heights,
unmollifiable, continued, listen,
this cut-up method will not work,
I can’t be spoken to this way and
what was it you said anyway: one
could go on with this: in the
beginning, it was easier, I think,
to begin than it is now: there was
some say one big pop, after which
complexity quickly ensued: whereas
if you began today, you would be
faced (figuratively) with an estimated
unenumerated 100 million species:
whereas there were no species at all
at first: when mud separated into
water and rock, then there were three
things: and light: I just feel so
broken down: there isn’t a bit of
room on this tape for a little
expansion or elaboration: sculpture
becomes grit: kidneys, tubules: a
blinding lack of scope and sense’s
fracturing frit: but, of course,
when everything runs, nothing runs
through your mind: the total
answering makes no world where you
can see the carriage rounding the
bend: streams need to break in on
themselves into banks and tend, this
way or that, noticeably apart:
everybody knows that’s what holds us
here forever limited, forever fragile
and not forever: there’s a bump on
my rump, right in the abyss of my
yss