Instead of an ear, I cut off my smallest toe,
and rail against my own limitation
can I translate this inner commotion
into something sublime
shove against the deep foreboding that I
will never have my canvas on
a calendar 119 years after I’m dead,
not even for that difficult
month, November, though all my
paintings are of sad heavy
clouds that suit the mood.
How many have there been
toiling one town over from Vincent or Jackson
deranged by lack of love or fame
seduced by muses one after another
scattering children and furniture
over the countryside in search of
the just-right legacy
that in this case is never found?
My poems will not be studied in school
even though I wrote them while drunk
on life and war and sex
just like Dylan or Dylan
my sonata will not be anyone’s
processional or dirge
will only join the restless notes
roiling in the void
the paintings by a milkmaid,
farmer poems, and the heart-braking
compositions of some car mechanic.
080309, 081109
who indeed, and for as many that are known, those not, are numbered among the stars, and those that have long burned out, the light is still coming at us light years traveled....great poem !! thanks
ReplyDeletei love this poem, too. and yet i must proclaim the process, the process, the eternal moment as my legacy... xooxoxoox
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