One was put in the lockup
in Toledo, Ohio
for ever and ever. One
took up country banjo
and teamed with an over-sexed
inarticulate midget
on harmonica. One writes
from Memphis that the whole weight
of the South is killing him
and the gangrenous Baptists
won’t let him piss in peace.
Another I loved has three
tailors—the bad Baudelaire
of South Pasadena, he
can’t scream for fear of waking
the neighbors and watches TV
without sound and writes nothing.
And the nation calls for its soul,
calls for its blood and belly,
and we, we number the five
fingers of our fists and try
anything to stay alive
without poems.
Today on the
eve of Thanksgiving I said
I will close my eyes, girl-like,
and when I open them there
will be something here to love
and to celebrate. When I
opened them there was only
the blank door and beyond it
the hall, and I did not see
William Blake as a dark child
crying: “Without a Poet
dreamless you slept on the blue
floor of Atlantis till I
& a hand opened by the
Waters of the Ohio
& made you America.”