Placed, & so beyond
(This is a revision of an earlier poem, which I called Poem.)
Today I only want to watch movies with James Dean
seraphic and astounded in his big turtle glasses
resembling perfectly (as he eyeballs a script)
the uppityness of a tree root
P says
stop writing poems I’m cold
she’s got cider donuts right off the cart and I’m tempted:
an annual indulgence at just the right moment
the chance to once and for all be appropriate
but I’m “too blue”
I’d rather be a poet
A room away P strings together a few good words in her usual manner
vigorous as chewing gum
& as pink; like Meg Murry with her cheeks deep in a conical flower
the cup on the stem bending like meter in the brain
P goes on phonemically
not initials and their time warp
but mouthing O’s and A’s as broadly and deliberately as a well-educated sturgeon:
I love that time when you feel like your essay is just a pile of word-refuse and desultory observations but then it occurs to you that there actually is some sort of organizing theme that you’ve sort of implicitly used. So it turns out you don’t have to scrap it entirely and start over after all.
I’m thinking of Hollywood and the way movies circulated in the fifties
their customary lazy descent into repeats on cable
cyclical but not in the way alluded by 35mm
not rolling onwards in any real or poetic tradition but then again
some call that ‘Heaven.’
