whatever it is I want to do it
like I want to sit down for awhile
by myself this week, get a personal
letter from William Saroyan as though
he’d been reading my books since childhood,
stand up at the reunion of everyone
who ever did me a favor & those I lied to
& abused or made an ass of myself trying to
impress and say, very softly, in a voice
like the works of an Indian we all expected
to be a poet but instead was warrior
“everything is a fiction”
sounding more like a Spanish philosopher
afraid to kick Franco in the ass and
spit on the church?
No, all I want to do
is sound like what I am always becoming
you know, what I am, and I want to call it
“poems”
& I want the poems to fit
in your pocket and as easily lost
to turn up on washday with the half used
books of matches and lint
to be left in the bathroom to be read
by visitors taking a shit or trying to
I want these poems to be written now
while you’re listening, later, when
we’re both doing something else
maybe we’ll remember, maybe we won’t
and no one will ever test either of us on it
and our children will be spared
embarrassing questions about their parents
I want these poems to fly south
when they have to
to cover the ground when it is time
to be used to wrap sandwiches in
for the kids to take to school
I want a concert to be given with my poems
as the audience
I want them to die on their feet or
going down on a lover
I don’t want anyone
to take my poems to bed with them
I want everyone to take my poems to work
to read instead of working
I want my poems to meet themselves
on their way from me to you & be surprised
I never want my poems to be mistaken
for something to be judged or eaten
fucked or framed anthologized or
criticized, I just want them to be
taken for what they are, simply,
almost embarrassingly: possible
(broadside c. 1970)