OLD AGE
Whatever is
wrong
won’t
be
wrong long.
this is the beginning of my next piece: I
don’t yet know what it’s about but I suppose
it’s about not knowing what it’s about: a
better beginning, however, might have been to
begin before the beginning with a great idea
full of precious content: content may, though,
sometimes interfere with the essential motions
that spell out stuff better than sense does:
essential motion for the most part implies
form, for essentiality is curiously both
highly defined and indefinable: what an
interesting combination: and what kind of
world are you in that you’re ending up in: I’d
say, whatever there is an inside to, I’m
outside: up to here I wrote the other day when
a videotaper aimed at me and my old typewriter
and said, write: what was I to write, the
imperative without warm-up or compass: you
have to look out when you let a photographer
into your place: they see quick possibilities
that rearrange your furniture, pull your
window plant out of its disposition to the
light, and work in angles not suggested by the
flat floor and straight wall: my philodendron
has lost half a lobe on a leaf and, for some
reason, the standing lamp won’t turn on: I
think poets should keep the doors to their
little work studies closed and seek publicity
in bars and at charity balls, auctions, and
street fights: outdoorspersons: it is not
worth 43 ¢ to be known as a poet: gangsters
have more fun, partly as a consequence of being
in a low tax bracket: poets would consider it
an honor to get within the range of paying
taxes, whereas gangsters fire back: but honor
is a stale thing that makes you feel stuffy:
imagine getting honor and stiff taxes