A Day In The Life Of A Poet

(arranged for a White Dinner, a tribute to Erik Satie, given by Art Clay et al at the Rote Fabrik in Zurich, 25/9/09)

Humankind cannot stand very much reality.

T.S. Eliot


I told you if I have to leave town

I would go to Chicago

there was vast resistance

boarding the plane


copyright everything

to stop other poets

stealing bits of conversation

or paraphrasing texts

perhaps ekphrasis

should be prosecuted

the Anacreonic song

banned from bars

when I find

myself with poets

they buy the drinks


they aren’t scientists reconciled

to the myth but God all the while

of nondenominational silence


I wrote with the drunk composure

of a new york state

felt sorry for something

and the pain of something good

naturally cruel my sin soiled soul

reduced to television and insulin

now was only a matter of time


and I didn’t know where it was coming from

behind the window or reflected in it

either way reflected in it

darkness and light

it is expectation and the unexpected

finally the expectation of the unexpected

leaning on the glass the dark shape behind its shape

or where it’s misshapen by the unknown known to be


I fixed it so it would break

there now it’s finished

puzzled by the solution


among the dead there is a slang


I am carried along

alone altogether

too many places at once by heart

hitchhiking up winter’s

interstate warm as newspaper

the insult of luck

the pudding of blood

makes we want to get

somewhere where

it’s not always

a river that outdoes

it’s banks


the intonation of deceit

sounds different

spelled the same

multiplying fractions

by time’s overdose

splotch of trammeled memories


random bastards
mother fuckers with no mothers
or just plain motherless fucks
stomping striding in their own righteousness
of wrong doing
"i am the man"
they say.
(ashes ! I say)
but... a hand in an empty pocket
looking for a few coins to rub
finding only a couple of balls to scratch
dangle and jangle to the sound of
early morning church bells
to that endless fucking hymm:
Ding dong...


still the literenergy vampire continues

his girlfriend speaks five times the language

he can he’s out of breath

these accidents are just people

waiting to happen


so place the mask around your mouth and nose and try to breathe normally

your nearest exit is probably behind you


this poem can’t make up it’s mind

how it feels

this poem is taking too long

to respond


but I must be allowed this madness

that I wished upon myself

and in wishing came true

I must be allowed this lust

old enough to love and

because I no longer feel do


beginnings in my life have no titles

my day has no subject no theme

and being the impersonation of 4 billion years of matter

I am either what I was or will become

otherwise de-believing so much of where I’ve been

you’ve been there and we seem the same