UNTITLED
In
poetry at least the imagination must not detach itself from reality…
—Wallace
Stevens
I want to be in love forever
and not like anyone else
though I also want to
write in a tradition
which may or may not
have been neglected
because you could not
write about your life
and falling in love
happens to people.
These days everyone wants
a piece of the real
and “representational writing”
and “documentary poetics”
describing what appears
in the imaginary mirror
the mind’s eye. It wasn’t ever
the real but how
it looked to us. Tonight
you must be
at least 1000 miles away
reading poems about fucking me
in a motel in Nebraska
which I can confirm
really happened. It made
your poem happen
and this poem can
never escape from it
and neither can we.
I will be selfish
for eternity,
I will never not love you.
Even this poem may be wrong
but at least it spoke
What it says
isn’t important. If you want
to tell people you fucked me
in a motel, I can’t stop you.
If fucking me in a motel
makes you want to write poems,
by all means let’s fuck
in a motel and write poems
we want to read at readings
and publish in journals
so that we can get jobs
and buy more expensive liquor.
Yes, we’re running out of time.
Every year the hangovers get worse.
But more than telling anyone
what really happened
most of all I want to be with you
writing poems
about our feelings not
because they are new but because
everyone has them
and because the poems we like
are emotional. And because
only poetry can make you feel
what I feel when
you are driving without a seatbelt
down a frozen highway
to read poems about fucking me
to strangers who afterwards
will remember only
that I was wearing cowboy boots
and it troubles me
that our words have become
so entwined with our bodies
that to others we are more them
than ourselves. This
is an argument for a context
that doesn’t permit
escape, a motel with no exits.
Words make things happen
you warn me. We are
especially susceptible, having
nothing else
to convey our feelings
but photographs of trees
and of our faces
resolute and dumb
in two dimensions.
|