How far can I carry these things I love, weight
of
ink & paper? The time for light garments & few
possessions
has arrived, & I stand at the station
to greet it with my one hundred
steamer trunks
& their regiment of porters. I long for the
light
of a single match to make decisions for me.
Dark matter is easy to
comprehend. It is to zero
what zero is to nothing. Zero
is not non-being,
nothingness; it's merely a placeholder, a bookmark,
a
cipher to keep the other numbers from falling all over
each other like
drunks on a subway. Before the Sumerians,
all numbers were drunks.
Then there is dark matter.
But there we should speak first of the heart.
Sit
there in your room & try not to think
of an elephant. Oops.
Now this poem contains
an elephant. Try not to think
of lost love.
Damn. Now this poem contains
a lost love. Stop. Erase
ivory
from your thoughts—tusk, ring or tinkling
piano keys, melancholy
wafting
six flights from the ground floor
bistro where an elephant drowns
its
sorrows—stop thinking
of that elephant—where a lost love
is recollected
while rummaging
between grace notes & minor
keys. Stop thinking
of
that lost love. Stop thinking. Stop.
We'll start again:
Your
room contains a trunk...
