Читать книгу Common Sense - Ted Greenwald - Страница 14

FOR TED, ON ELECTION DAY

for Ted Berrigan

rain (second day in a row)

morning (day-after-day)

body smell, need a bath

coffee cigarets ashes in ashtrays

one-after-another pile up

need shoes, yesterday walking

in rain revealed a hole in my right sole

sitting around not thinking of much of anything

feeling drizzly, wait to go vote (later)

‛no’ to mass transit amendment

have my fill of mass transport

everyone wanting to transport themselves

went to Columbia (last night) to hear

Ron read translations (one of four readers, translators)

fine translations drinking opium

through pores of ordinary american

unlike the others (studies in the subordinate clause)

(non) relation to (any) poetry

first school setting for me in 4 years (puke!)

vergule

everything starting to fit in place

have a home

be a home home

reaping (this fall) routines

reappearing in the dress of melancholy like

the housewife of a house

making (work) time go

I’ve made some money working with my own hands

I’ve made some working with my own hands

I’ve made up much

experienced some done some

I’ve loved often enough

been shot down enough to hurt often

I’ve pitied myself as well as others (both ways unhealthy emotion)

I’ve wondered if I could love someone else (morbid)

I’ve made my doubts into poems

discovering covers often get kicked off

to cool the body’s heat and mind’s jungle growth

I’ve wondered (and felt made to wonder) if my own ‛worth’ is

‛worth much’ and wavered

well, Ted, when I saw you on 8th St last month

we (you) talked for awhile and

then went over St. Mark’s and Gem’s to take pictures with Gerard

you said, the one thing that always disturbed you

about my poems

is there are no really embarrassing moments

in them (I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, you were holding forth)

I don’t really know what’s embarrassing, shot elastic in panties

at a party that drop and stop conversations

turn heads?

who knows (‛who knows’ embarrasses me)

and anyway there’s quite a difference between gossip and

embarrassment

(couldn’t get a word in edgewise, for two hours)

what embarrasses me is

I’m 28 and aware (and made aware) of it all the time

I’m finding it difficult to stop smoking (still 3 pks a day)

and have been drinking too much lately (out of what, boredom

habit, pain? don’t know, who knows)

smoking too much dope

irritates the shit out of my nervous system

being continuously irritated (snapping)

putting on weight

plagued by small aches and pains (right now open abscess draining

behind my right ball, can’t sit)

think I have trouble sleeping (and, I guess, really don’t)

my habits and routines embarrass me

and I still, although I don’t think so as much, think my arms

too skinny (they really aren’t)

my body too small or too big (varies from day-to-day)

it’s embarrassing to feel

my self body image etc (often)

defined by people around me (my reaction to their reactions)

that embarrasses me a lot

zeal embarrasses me, your zeal for instance

always lining up poets and their poems

one up one down

in relation to you and your poems

(I’m embarrassed by the same zeal, ambitions,

it’s no real consolation that when it rains it rains on everyone)

most of all, this Election Day, I’m embarrassed by death

death is really the only embarrassing thing

and sometimes (unexpectedly these days more often)

it scares the shit out of me