Matt Hart
POEM AS BED
If you make it you have to lie in it, that's true.
But what one lies about is one's own business—
unless s/he gets caught, which is hard on the spine.
Boiled eggs. Heroin addiction. Sunday afternoon.
Here we make merry with orange peels.
Here we sleep days in a boat.
This young man has a mind of French toast
and this one a lung full of fog.
Think Wee Willy Winkie smirking
and you'll have a pretty good idea what I look like.
Ladies, are you tired of your husband and 2.2 kids?
Well, so are we. Goodnight.
And by the way, it's time once again for ye old Hit Parade.
Keep in mind, however, that it was Kenneth Koch who wrote
the first "Poem as Bed"
only it's called "In Bed," and it's quite long.
Always curse your alarm clock.
Every morning wake up to the sound of your heart.
When you are about to sleep with someone
in their bed for the first time
reach down and steal the tag off the mattress.
Bedclothes aside: this is the reason I'm putting you on.
“Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom..."
Now skip to the end,
"The End."
I'm sorry, that's not fair—but you were starting to doze off.
When you wear your pajamas to the Cinderella ball
remember that some go completely without them.
The devil is always close by to a bed.
So also the bedbug.
So also Mayakovsky.
The poem as bed is not one that's waiting outside in the snow,
but it might be reading at the bus stop with pleasure,
it might be feverishly dying alone.
This little piggy stayed home, it is said—and you know where.
Preposterous lines, disastrous stripes, oh my god...it's a bed?
A bed is a bed is a bed. And by any other name, still...
Insert "doin' it" music here.
Dim the lights. Burn some incense.
Quick! while the Lion makes mud of the Lamb.
Ezra Pound Ezra Pound Ezra Pound!
Elizabeth Bishop. A bucket of cats.
Once in a bed I ate four hundred peaches.
Once I was sick for a fortnight in bed.
On my night stand the end of the world.
John Wilkes Booth laid up with a splint.
In a sleeping fit, Desnos mentions a walrus.
Persephone deliriously Hollywood-square.
A farm on stilts.
A woman mid-sentence.
Whatever may happen in the vacuum of sleep,
it's best if you keep it to yourself.