Novel time
of Nobel poets.
The switch to fiction–
the despair, the characterization.
All of this makes sense to me,
but I cannot write.
I’m an old car, in the garage
that just won’t make its way to rumble.
And so I tumble,
in my head, full of thoughts, William James impulses,
if you read the Varieties of Religious Experience.
And I say ‘yes’ to the no impulse,
and try to reverse it,
placing the car in reverse,
after it finally sparks a sound.
I drive right through the center of town,
with a pad of paper and a pencil,
indulging in actions that have never been done:
Getting excited, and shaking my arms
through the sun-roof and writing down,
the names of all new characters–
And when I finally make my way back, to the garage,
after one stall, waving to my neighbor, and trip my way to the typewriter,
I’d rather be, coming up with a whole new
set of characters, as the impulses move across the foyer, and reset,
like the time on a microwave.
