Another Graduate school-era poem, written somewhere in years 1995-1996
the problem is not
in the time
for there is plenty
of that
no lack of days
spent
with books and pens
notebooks to be filled
the mind eager
bent to the task
it loves the long sweet still
consumption of
lingering texts
and lives at wide desks
in library-silence
no lack of nights
lying there like paper
with eyes wide-awake and lined
to precision, the body
folded, unquiet, largely alone
and inelegant: stealing words from
pillowed space, it hogs clichéd
covers
from the tossing-turning
other shoulder, when I really
should
just shut my mind
and
maybe
"take a lover"
this abundant time
is wrecklessly spent
when body/mind becomes
wildly aroused under
heavy blankets, and
there's no lack
of inspiration but -
I find my energy all
used up
with no
thing created
out of
that all that crazy
literary
heat and friction
the problem is the laziness
and it all ends up being wasted
the images lost to dreaming
the ideas yield no precise
paper production
the problem is the giving-in
to words that are eventually
recorded, my too-easy
personal
story, the whining
and trite, cloying
emotion
the problem is the undisciplined
days and nights of
hedonism, the desire
for it to be quick
and easy
like masturbation, how the
mind & body love
immediate gratification
and in my covetous hurry
the paper sinks
into profligate
time when I'm so tired and
heavy
(like Hemingway)
I can barely lift the pen
to describe things
that should not be recorded
the problem is that
the greedy soul
goes seeking
poems in these excesses
as if it can obscure an almost
willful
ignorance:
as if I don't quite know how
I got
here, or even how
I got
an English Degree
(from a really good college!)
without reading
Moby Dick?
the problem is
in the soul
which tries to hide my lack
with smoke-screen
of so many
cigarettes
at the bar, as if my words
will be more beautiful
for the bottles
the varied colors, shapes
and sizes of glass
as if I could somehow reflect
myself ten times
the size
I usually am
(since no one else will do it)
as if in harsh morning light
there isn't always
glinting, grinning shards
to rub against a tired
paper body, saying:
you drunk fool,
to think that you could ever write!
