Lives of the Postmodern Poets
You were born too late. For any creation tale. Born with a plastic fork. The tiniest of toy forks. Hanging from an elastic band. Around your neck. And you’d grow up mostly text. Torn out the center. Of what was passed off. As a universe. Tensing up as those past pros would draw the future. Out of a bag. Where they’d have you serving your two masters. The lost father. Stolen from you by some robber barons. And the host of your game show. With her most silent G. Who you would let manage your career. This is your take on things. Acts of selflessness only witnessed by yourself. It would be too much otherwise. To think. That this practice had any resemblance. To truth. So you’re still talking all morning. Still coming up just short. Of ecstasy’s unforeseeable cast. No matter what I am thinking. This is all I am saying. Words can hold one memory. While remembering yet another. In your day they pawned this off. As a low style of magic. Now the rich don’t even allow us this. Or that. Sons of bitches. So why not click the clicker and begin again? Reborn in the horse’s neigh. Or its root-brown hair. Ever-shorn of our nearness. To the barn’s arbitrary light. Orbiting timidly. Like this robe of ambivalent motes! Oh Christ. How can any of this be? Centrally made up or decreed? If we were bored. None of us said so. Or let on. Whatever you do. Just don’t go. All italicized on me. This minute.
I eat plenty of good things
and plenty of bad
the sun finds most of it this same-tasting paste
