Of inspiration
If light-starved could be gooey ache,
and smell—just slightly—of carrion.
Well, there you have it—
where they come from,
the poems.
The cruelest science
Do not tell me how a poem works.
Spare me your taxonomies:
slant rhyme, assonance, echo,
metaphor, simile, etc., etc.
Vivisection is the cruelest science.
The quivering thing always dies.
And we no nearer God
than when we pulled it from its cage.
2008, in which the poem occupies
Why Greek? the poem insists. It’s our crisis too.
I apologize, dear reader, this poem—
it continues to ravel, it stumbles, rushes off every which way,
yarn caught in a fan, mad cats.
Is the page too narrow? too short?
Are the margins wrong, some
childhood trauma unresolved? Spite?
Why the Greek crisis? nags the poem.
It was 2008; 2008 belongs to us all.
It was Wednesday, we noticed, if you remember,
how it is we live in a shrieking opera:
Valkyries howl, uncoited lovers wail,
the city burning, greasy smoke settles on the sea.
Wednesday the banks shuttered,
the shop shelves went majestically bare.
Not that it mattered. We were out of work,
our currency not worth its paper.
It was Wednesday also, smirks the poem,
you called in the experts.
Mindful of our straits—and the environment—
they eschewed their usual jets, flew business class
and billed by the week.
Minor officials, sneers the poem,
middle managers at best. Nobodies!
Liquidate your assets, they say.
Technocrats, hisses the poem,
Schreibtischtäter, desk-murderers!
Again, dear reader, I apologize.
This poem—in fact poems, as you know, dear reader—
are not easily managed.
Liquidate your assets, repeat the experts,
precise, mathematical. And lay out their spreadsheets.
Motherfucking mercenaries! screams the poem.
You’re not helping, I answer.
Forget your dusty empires, they add.
You can’t eat monuments, drink winedark sea.
These harpies and lovers, your concertina-swinging monsters,
such vast expenditures of energy and air:
Unsustainable!
Mind your balance of payments, they say.
Here’s our bill, please check it carefully,
and fly home.
Whispers the poem:
There’s a dandelion in your concrete.
The seventh state
You asked about the states of matter.
There are six:
Yesterday, tomorrow.
Up, down.
Left, right.
Yesterday reflects tomorrow. Tomorrow cheats.
Up is only so because it isn’t down,
which in itself carries yesterday, tomorrow and,
of course, up.
Left simply applies a slight orientation of yesterday reflecting;
right does as well, somewhat more aggressively.
Of these all the world is made,
galaxies smudged across our grand, orbiting lens,
the mud at the rivermouth spawning.
And, of course, the seventh—
The seventh,
which, it is in my interest to affirm, is
the space between heartbeats
where poems
and infidelities
are born.
