because a lazy world returns me to poetry...

and because longing should always be
free off who you long for...

Incident

I look across the table and think
(fiery with love)
Ask me, go on, ask me
to do something impossible,
something freakishly useless,
something unimaginable and inimitable

Like making a finger break into blossom
or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes
or remembering tomorrow.

I will you to ask it.
But all you say is
Will you give me a cigarette?
And I smile and,
returning to the marvelous world
of possibility
I give you one
with a hand that trembles
with a human trembling.

-- Norman MacCaig


This is for a friend, who thinks only his grandmother told him about the lack of inner resources

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

-- John Berryman


but irony doesn't bore me ... how could it

Winter '84

I tell the corner store owner
'pretty cold out there'
he says
'ain't what it used to be'
'oh', i say, 'why is that'
innocently
tensing
wondering if coloured immigration
has affected the seasons...
'they've been fooling around
with the weather',
he says.
[his wife nods]
'ever since they sent a man
to the moon
it hasn't been right'

oh, i say,
breathing out
intrigued
'yeah, i know what you mean'

-- Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta