11-04-2023, 10:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-04-2023, 10:39 PM by TranquillityBase.)
Before the sun could do more
than illuminate the gray of an early November day
I was having coffee with the last of the tree frogs
a conversation mostly of farewell.
Then came birdsong as I debated the value
of what was to come.
If only I had a script, an injection of passion or even just dry humor
to lead the way to each scene,
to tell me where to stand, whether to shake my head or cry.
Part of me knew what was coming
more pages of print revealing that my hero
was a cold-blooded killer.
His doctor’s detachment stood him in good stead
in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra.
But at least Ashbery’s poems have freed me
and light, artificial or otherwise, can no longer deter me.
There are always the pills
ready to invade my bloodstream, turn it into a river
of brain changing pulses, impelling me onward
across the chasms and around the quicksands
of simply living through another 24 hour era.
The essential problem is there’s no victory
to come, only endless, trivial revolution.
To accept that, I need a Buddha or a Christ
and both seem more at home as figures in the sky
and so my meditations end.
My wife is making her coffee
and the movie begins.
than illuminate the gray of an early November day
I was having coffee with the last of the tree frogs
a conversation mostly of farewell.
Then came birdsong as I debated the value
of what was to come.
If only I had a script, an injection of passion or even just dry humor
to lead the way to each scene,
to tell me where to stand, whether to shake my head or cry.
Part of me knew what was coming
more pages of print revealing that my hero
was a cold-blooded killer.
His doctor’s detachment stood him in good stead
in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra.
But at least Ashbery’s poems have freed me
and light, artificial or otherwise, can no longer deter me.
There are always the pills
ready to invade my bloodstream, turn it into a river
of brain changing pulses, impelling me onward
across the chasms and around the quicksands
of simply living through another 24 hour era.
The essential problem is there’s no victory
to come, only endless, trivial revolution.
To accept that, I need a Buddha or a Christ
and both seem more at home as figures in the sky
and so my meditations end.
My wife is making her coffee
and the movie begins.