Felt shitty yesterday.
And now still today.
Ate pork with old friends on a big river deck.
St. Croix cigar boats.
Beer in a big floor cooler.
But I just drank four cans of water.
Climbed up to the path below the house to pee.
That’s what I’m remembering now.
Now the sound of trucks in the alley.
Red bird-berries over the porch.
My feet bare on the cedar slats.
White tee-shirt, lime-green lettering,
S. Padre Island, TX—
where I walked the beech and saw
watermelon chapstick in the sand.
Now a philosophical thought,
my mind feeding me so much shit.
Who is being fed? What is one hungry for
in Ron Silliman’s writing?
A slant of mind, of
another mind from mine.
Standing near our little
stunted spruce tree, peeing
on our old cat Rascal’s gravestone.
Tiny blue-gray chickadee
beating its wings
inches from my eyes.
It’s all gold, so write it.
You can’t stop writing
till you die.
So, realizing I can switch everything around later.
Is that legitimate?
To ensure authenticity,
the poet never lieth.
But I’ve long departed
from my one-sentence-per-line plan.
But now I’m back.
Always the birds. Always the traffic hum.
Always my feet pushing
away from the earth,
heel-toe lifting off,
heel-toe soft landing.
Walking, though I sit at Dunn Bros.
wasting these precious early morning moments,
“Good morning, bon joir.”
“I’ll get you a jamba juice.”
Already it’s hard to think of much to add.
Soon I’ll have to stop writing.
What’s keeping me alive.
Because the poet nothing asserteth.
Never having cut
the stem-girdling root.
Actaeon watching the naked bathers.
Man of the invasive gaze torn
by the dogs of the goddess. In
shady clearing, corpuscles
of sun lighting
the bitten throat.
Furry coat a bloody smear.
Poor stag!
But why should we feel sorry
for a filthy peeping Tom?
Back to whatever.
Our little bird garden.
Small, long-stemmed white flowers.
Upside-down pink badminton birdies.
A sidelong sunflower.
And the living-room curtain selection task.
Desert pearl. Sunflower seed.
Mojave taupe. Shit-brindle.
Changing registers, discourse levels.
Returning once again to the abstract.
Objects pulled from their context.
The meditative. A serious reflective person
expressing insights about life.
The audience sighs! What wisdom! This will be
one of thousands of poems they’ve encountered.
Will they remember it?
Why do they enjoy it, sighing as they do?
Beholding my soul naked.
They let my soul touch them. Am I really
such a slut?
It’s clearly all a put-on.
Everyone is acting.
If you pretend hard enough
to be moved, are you moved indeed?
Jack Nicholson playing the E-minor Prelude.
It’s vanity, really, people conceited
about how sensitively moved they are.
Well, I’ll surprise ‘em
by not being moving at all.
They’ll be mildly put out, although they probably
haven’t been expecting anything consciously.
They can completely ignore me if they want to.
They won’t notice how the style of this ramble
keeps changing from periodic to run-on.
They won’t know I’m holding out on ‘em—
as, for most people, it’s quite difficult
to pay much attention
when someone is intoning a poem.
But now, to my left,
a gray-haired man in a red plaid shirt
is saying to his chubby wife and son,
“Shall we now wander out into the day?”
And now still today.
Ate pork with old friends on a big river deck.
St. Croix cigar boats.
Beer in a big floor cooler.
But I just drank four cans of water.
Climbed up to the path below the house to pee.
That’s what I’m remembering now.
Now the sound of trucks in the alley.
Red bird-berries over the porch.
My feet bare on the cedar slats.
White tee-shirt, lime-green lettering,
S. Padre Island, TX—
where I walked the beech and saw
watermelon chapstick in the sand.
Now a philosophical thought,
my mind feeding me so much shit.
Who is being fed? What is one hungry for
in Ron Silliman’s writing?
A slant of mind, of
another mind from mine.
Standing near our little
stunted spruce tree, peeing
on our old cat Rascal’s gravestone.
Tiny blue-gray chickadee
beating its wings
inches from my eyes.
It’s all gold, so write it.
You can’t stop writing
till you die.
So, realizing I can switch everything around later.
Is that legitimate?
To ensure authenticity,
the poet never lieth.
But I’ve long departed
from my one-sentence-per-line plan.
But now I’m back.
Always the birds. Always the traffic hum.
Always my feet pushing
away from the earth,
heel-toe lifting off,
heel-toe soft landing.
Walking, though I sit at Dunn Bros.
wasting these precious early morning moments,
“Good morning, bon joir.”
“I’ll get you a jamba juice.”
Already it’s hard to think of much to add.
Soon I’ll have to stop writing.
What’s keeping me alive.
Because the poet nothing asserteth.
Never having cut
the stem-girdling root.
Actaeon watching the naked bathers.
Man of the invasive gaze torn
by the dogs of the goddess. In
shady clearing, corpuscles
of sun lighting
the bitten throat.
Furry coat a bloody smear.
Poor stag!
But why should we feel sorry
for a filthy peeping Tom?
Back to whatever.
Our little bird garden.
Small, long-stemmed white flowers.
Upside-down pink badminton birdies.
A sidelong sunflower.
And the living-room curtain selection task.
Desert pearl. Sunflower seed.
Mojave taupe. Shit-brindle.
Changing registers, discourse levels.
Returning once again to the abstract.
Objects pulled from their context.
The meditative. A serious reflective person
expressing insights about life.
The audience sighs! What wisdom! This will be
one of thousands of poems they’ve encountered.
Will they remember it?
Why do they enjoy it, sighing as they do?
Beholding my soul naked.
They let my soul touch them. Am I really
such a slut?
It’s clearly all a put-on.
Everyone is acting.
If you pretend hard enough
to be moved, are you moved indeed?
Jack Nicholson playing the E-minor Prelude.
It’s vanity, really, people conceited
about how sensitively moved they are.
Well, I’ll surprise ‘em
by not being moving at all.
They’ll be mildly put out, although they probably
haven’t been expecting anything consciously.
They can completely ignore me if they want to.
They won’t notice how the style of this ramble
keeps changing from periodic to run-on.
They won’t know I’m holding out on ‘em—
as, for most people, it’s quite difficult
to pay much attention
when someone is intoning a poem.
But now, to my left,
a gray-haired man in a red plaid shirt
is saying to his chubby wife and son,
“Shall we now wander out into the day?”
