08-15-2013, 03:01 AM
I don't know the names of fruits
or trees
or rocks
or flowers;
but I know all the names
of all the women
that have ever rejected me.
There've been hundreds.
Most of them had Es
at least somewhere in their names.
Some of them were famous.
But this isn't about me;
it's about all the friends I've never had,
all the would-be poets I met in Central Park
and in libraries and bookstores all over the country.
The ones that were brought up in small towns,
whose high school teachers fed them
Shakespeare and Byron and the occasional
Allen Ginsberg;
just enough to make them think
their thoughts, their feelings, their anger,
confusion
and humor
were worth filling notebook
after notebook.
The ones that went everywhere around the United States,
staying in each city just long enough to write
one poem about everything that they've ever read about;
and came back home to post them on Poetry.com.
Those were the ones that had life
just bulging from within,
like a teenage, virgin penis
on a coast to coast pilgrimage with his newly found muse;
the ones not afraid to love, to cry, to die
and to be serious.
The ones I met, laid next to, borrowed from and gave to,
read and was read by...
Before they went to college,
and discovered Europe...
That there was more over there than the British Isles
and analyzed Classics and sexy, tragic Romance.
Things they can't understand.
Things I tried to explain,
as we held each other in the shade of a mushroom
next to the White Rabbit's bronze umbrella,
through a language they were still capable of understanding.
or trees
or rocks
or flowers;
but I know all the names
of all the women
that have ever rejected me.
There've been hundreds.
Most of them had Es
at least somewhere in their names.
Some of them were famous.
But this isn't about me;
it's about all the friends I've never had,
all the would-be poets I met in Central Park
and in libraries and bookstores all over the country.
The ones that were brought up in small towns,
whose high school teachers fed them
Shakespeare and Byron and the occasional
Allen Ginsberg;
just enough to make them think
their thoughts, their feelings, their anger,
confusion
and humor
were worth filling notebook
after notebook.
The ones that went everywhere around the United States,
staying in each city just long enough to write
one poem about everything that they've ever read about;
and came back home to post them on Poetry.com.
Those were the ones that had life
just bulging from within,
like a teenage, virgin penis
on a coast to coast pilgrimage with his newly found muse;
the ones not afraid to love, to cry, to die
and to be serious.
The ones I met, laid next to, borrowed from and gave to,
read and was read by...
Before they went to college,
and discovered Europe...
That there was more over there than the British Isles
and analyzed Classics and sexy, tragic Romance.
Things they can't understand.
Things I tried to explain,
as we held each other in the shade of a mushroom
next to the White Rabbit's bronze umbrella,
through a language they were still capable of understanding.
