I was a poet, no longer
I couldn't bend the night beam
nor put words to denounce the world
The world is still there, no matter how much the poems denounce it
I was a poet because I wanted to be a wild son of Whitman
live in the woods so as not to feel that I had not lived
step on Paumanok on the way west
or to Lakota land, to unite the continents
from the future of the note to the morning of the earth
I never really wanted to denounce the world
there is no prosecutor, no councilor
a treasurer
a chief of staff
to resign for a poem against him
I was a boy because I believed in natural violence
although I do not know well how to define it, or defend it
No, I was one of the rhapsodies because I wanted to be
an electric song, a barbaric scream, wild
between the gray hairs of Whitman's beard
Maybe i never was
I did not see the cry before the sealed mouth
nor the larvae growing on the plum
neither will I see my death sheltered in my throat
And still I said
and I'm not
I am intrigued by the huge number of people
who call themselves poets
and sometimes the shoelaces are tied, so as not to face
against the floor
who do not want to study procedural poetry
and they demand a cushion and a drink
at Parnassus
I was a poet and some said that it was good
until I saw that I had thrown away forty years
of not being a lawyer and having good teeth
being twice divorced with two kids on Saturdays
play golf with father, before the barbecue
Sunday at the country house
I was a good poet, some said
that's why, when I had a need, I sent
my praised poems to all contests
and I never had a mention
Need clouds opinion
I read the winning poems and I thought myself superior
so I started copying those voices
because I needed the orange tickets for the one who wins
I asked a whole book of questions
What kind of miracle is frost?
Does a bestial conscience sleep in the salt of the ocean?
What fruit tears the tissue of the dead?
Does anyone else see the speckled jewels on the back of the horses?
Only I can perceive the monstrous character of chickens?
What does it mean to see a black crab hatch from the sand?
How did the sailor feel when he saw, in the distance, the Bronze Colossus in the
port of Rhodes?
I got mad twice more, with me
Win contests?
If you only wanted to be a wild child
a perpetual walker on the back of the nations
Save the morning electric turn, on the shores
of the Milky Way
Discover what poem the lady in red wrote
in the night garden
smoke until you achieve the wisdom of ozone
write something that looks like the little green bridge
what Monet painted
walk until you find Rimbaud's amputated leg
mixed with other legs in the Ardennes
You wanted to anticipate Karl Gustav in saying what light bulb
was going to burn first
Jean jung express
How long would it take for my hand to become a fish
if he left her under the water, there, in the lake?
I was a poet, no longer
I'm thinking of shining shoes
and in the pills for the tension
I can't write poems against engineers
I don't even have proclamations for marches
I yawn at the right thing because still
I didn't hear a flash in the new morals
Read for the benefit of, denouncing this, that
it's the worst, Hank said
I was one of you, no longer
I was trapped in the white crowded cities
of fools, oh me, oh life
I couldn't be
a wild, electric child
a checkerboard waiting
under the sun on the road
I couldn't go hand in hand
of the leg
of the toothy will
from uncle walt
Sorry but not anymore