The Problem

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!