I get ready to leave. Suddenly my mind goes blank. Where did I park my car? Did I drive a car here? I must have for I am sure that I didn’t walk here. I panic. I cannot imagine where I might have parked it. I can’t remember parking it. I cannot visualize my car in its spot – this is I know where to go – I build a map in my head that leads back to its spot. There is no image there, no data to reconstruct a path back to it. I have no idea where I might have parked it. I am in a panic. When I’m in a panic I can’t think. I am unable to think right now. This used to happen when I awoke in the dark in the middle of the night. I would have no concept of the layout of the room that I was in – should I roll off the bed to the left or the right side? In which direction was the bathroom? Where was the front door? Calm down! Think! I would run through a diagram (floor plan) of all the places where I had ever lived until one of them would made sense. Yes that is the room that I’m in now. Roll off of the bed to the left – turn right, take three steps and turn left and walk three step ahead. You are now in the bathroom. The light switch is on the left. In the fog of just waking up this is OK. But I hadn’t just woken up. There was no fog. It is the middle of the day. The sun is bright. I do not have any excuse this time. I fight the panic back. Oh yes, next to the column on the south side up on the second floor. Go up thesed stairs, then turn left and its is four vehicles away to the right. I can see it - my vehicle. There it is! Thank God! But there may come a time soon when it won’t ever come back to me. Will I even know that I don’t know? What is it that I have forgoten? Did I forget something? Where am I? How do I get home? Where do I live?
Thoughts are spent fuel rods – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000 p12
If a poet could have explained his poem any better he would have written it differently. But then maybe it wouldn’t have been a poem?
Ghandi was asked, “What do you think of Western Civilization?” His reply: “It would be a good idea”
I hold the book in my hand
I lay it down on a table
I pick up a pen. I scribble
Just below the previous
Scribbling.This is my journal
I call what I am writing a poem, but it’s just
A list that I have made up
I used to make lists regularly
Long lists of miscellaneous things
Lists of unrelated things
Inclusive lists; exclusive lists
I made a list of the ways
To reserve a seat
You can place a program
On your seat but not
On the seats of others
For whom you are waiting
The arrival
I tried to explain, “The usher might
Have placed them there. You can’t
Just place programs on a whole
Row of seats.”
It could just as well have been
The seats without programs
That had been reserved.
No you have to leave something
More personal for when
Your are gone. Something
That is worth stealing
Something not worth taking
Is not worth keeping
There were more ways listed
All the ways for properly reserving
Seats. It was a very
Comprehensive list
I didn't think of it then as a poem.
And it wasn't a poem then either
There were more ways listed
All the ways for properly reserving
Seats. It was a very
Comprehensive list
I didn't think of it then as a poem.
And it wasn't a poem then either
It is those of us who cannot untangle ourselves from the past that are really dangerous in the present… We are dangerous because when we come out of the past we are rich with its energies and poorly experienced in that business of daily living – Paul Metcalf – Collected Works, v.1 p7
Too big to fail
Too big to prosecute
Too big to let life
Nothing resembles mythological thought more than political ideology – Claude Levi-Strauss – Anthropologie Structurale
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