In the darkness and in the light this poetry gathers.
Outside I can hear the cans rattling as the gatherers
of trash make their rounds. I look out
and they see me, and we wave. We do that most every morning
when I am downstairs having breakfast. That much, at least,
we have in common, a Von Economo network of neurons
that provides a capacity for social awareness, for empathic communion.
But how can they know that? Are they aware, for example, what
I have here, piles of undiscardible collectanea,
freeze-dried, fragmented, and they tell me, pathological ideas as friable
as leaves in autumn, an overflowing garden, wild, unkempt,
not at all dissimilar to this, my mindset: an uninhabitable,
hard disc drive full of mishmosh?
So what do they do with all that trash? I do believe they have that over me.
My verbiage, I think, may actually make walls bulge.
It is like someone with a sore throat, a fire-cracker inside.
Papers stick out of the drawers like newspapers
out of old men’s pockets. What I need, I think, is that better back-up
they’re talking about. I will know that they are there
but they will be invisible No, no! That is even worse.
I need that mess like I need my nose.
Thus my indispensable, my incunabular order of genetic makeup,
the crazy swaddling cradle of my being.