Poem

Poem

On the muffled common my lungs felt & I’m

18 so why are my hands shaking I should know better

I walk the Rue Saint-Lazare but really it is Church Road

& I look through the windows of the trees but my lip

__bleeds

because I am nervous. We could die in Venice &

cry or eat cake but you can’t take my genes. On to the

river & over & there I can sit in a strip of peace

but not for long because you are waiting with lunch &

an Irish dog skips by

singing ‘top o’ the morning’ & its old man grumbles. &

swatting flies in a café I find your face in the paper &

I have to stop to sit with the flies

‘til something bigger comes along & then I

leave

with you in my pocket & walk

the streets wondering if we’ll

though we never will, no one does &

I return to the river to find fault & delight

with the birds & the rain which

you said wouldn’t & I creep away

to be with my pavement &

don’t stop me now I’m having a baby &

curled up on her back I thought of you & dreamt

that I was over you but you were someone

else & I walked through a desert by the train tracks

& the ice cream melted so I woke up cold.

Then I fretted until I thought I’d become a

guitar & I could hoover through the New Year

but I thought I was over you.

Then I remembered it was someone else so I stole

some air and kept it in case we ran out.

& wrapped up in tweed a monument escaped

my grasp & I gave up thinking & focussed

on fragments of sherry outside my door dodging

the droplets

with my new leather shoes but they don’t fit well

yet & cut my ankles & you’d know what to

do.

Fell

out with a codebreaker, I had trouble with

‘U’ & the rest except for ‘R’, ‘O’ & ‘B’ which

had already been stolen. & then a

sausage graced my lips but not in that way

I had to take my trousers off first

because I spilt a drink & wanted to feel involved.

The roads have been empty and with only concrete

gardens I gravel to get your feet but it’s

only Tuesday on the wrong week & everybody’s dead

in Venice.

This is from an assignment; we had to write a

Frank O'Hara "I do this, I do that," style poem.

I thought the Ted Berrigan line helped create the pace

of the poem.