June Nineteenth or How Tim Made Me Hate Poetry (Draft)
I want to travel
to where wisdom is king,
that is my dream, my longing,
so many days wasted on
man, on men, too many days
forgotten for money, power,
I want new dreams, and
new knowledge, I am
losing touch, I am samurai,
falling on my own sword
to satiate my desire for
youth, apologize; in old age,
afore
we used afore, I now want
the wine of youth, to
pour it out for quests,
for liberty for all, for
the youth is wasted on
the youth, afterall, and after
all is after us all, I think I
am lost,
like when I was reading
Bukowski, in the front room,
poems posthumously printed,
by a lover and friend a scar,
it is easier to understand when
you are wizened and gruff,
it’s more fun to understand
when you have given it all up,
or when you have nothing,
when you grapes at life,
and grasp at death, and
you still proofread when it
suits your needs and your
vision,
what a feeling, to be
in, to be out,
to become fallow
and frosted and buried enlivened,
where the free verse poets fight
the rhymers, in hand-to-hand combat,
for the eye of one admirer,
you’ll never admit that,
like when you read
TS Eliot in college and felt
fresh and moved,
and reread at as an adult,
and felt fooled and invalidated,
I want to go there
again, away from process, before
I hated knowing, before I was
trite, a predictable cur, before I
could define words, before I was
asked to answer,
I want to ask again, I want
to sing in the shower for the
first time, to fall from grace, to
wish for all night coffee, and no
regrets, it’s a crawl to get out of
bed some days,
but I do, and it’s hot, and
then I’m not, and the day begins
again, just at the beginning,
just when I meant for it to,
45 and still a child, 45 is
the worst number I know,
I hope tomorrow is different
again