En Route
—“Whether in fiction or reality, most Romantic poets eventually turned into bourgeois capitalists.” Graham Robb, Rimbaud
All over wherever we are the waves are making
eyes at me as if having some sort of vision.
The waves tsk-tsk against the hull.
The deck rocks like an imbecile,
the stacks are davenning and half-visible
whales with cowlicks spout the way.
The playfulness of the postmodern has a
a vitality that somehow makes my emptiness
a prerequisite to its fullness—I could even say
this feels like a rehearsal of the Seven Days.
The breakers pun on the gulls, the gulls on eyes,
eyes on distant arches, which is why
nothing is ever one thing, and why
when and if
I get wherever I am going –my
destiny beckons like the tower on the cover
of an alumni brochure—
I’ll rethink everything,
join the smelly mob with its static present
and combo second-person singular-plural,
abandon the subjunctive and become
unforgettable by teaming with the unspeakable.
I will be done with history. Call me the glare
off the radiant emptiness out there.
