More Than Why Not
-for Jane
When Duke starts thumpin
Out Rockin in Rhythm
Sadness and sorrow
Disappear from the air
Like when you’ve danced for an hour
And your blood is up
And you can’t help but wear brightness
You feel so there.
Let the wheel spin round
Til the cow comes down
From that long jump
Over the moon.
Let death be the price of the ticket.
When the horns kick in
Hereness is rightness
And living is hot
And even the most down spirit
Knows the answer to why
Is something much more
Than why not.
(1981)
Insomnia
Now I lay me down to stare for hours at the dark.
3:08 a.m.
Maybe if I lie on my right side.
Maybe if I lie on my left.
Let’s play Find the Position.
If the throbbing doesn’t kill me it will drive me mad.
Memories.
Then a very strange thought:
Were I to rub ketchup on my dog
I would heal its wounds.
4:17 a.m.
Your soft rhythmic breathing’s a comfort.
I love you for it.
Besides, I could still get almost three hours sleep.
Memories.
I pin my life to mist.
*
God is the ultimate insomniac.
In the vastness of every night,
Like a stone at the bottom of a very deep well,
Staring up at nothing.
Except this universe of course,
Which is that nothing wrapped in fiction.
(1999)
The Dead
-learned in
a dream
Equipped with out of date catalogs
They can only order obsolete parts.
(1999)
© John
Bloomberg-Rissman
John Bloomberg-Rissman writes the following in the body of the mail with his poems:
ReplyDelete"While I make no claim that these poems answer any questions, they are responses to my father's and then my mother's deaths, written at the time they died (1981 and 1999). So in a way, just as responses, they were what I had at the time. No Erlkonig-level-masterpieces here (but hey, you know I'n no Goethe! (who is?)). But these still resonate with me, at least, so they're not nothing."
And I would also like to direct you to the following:
http://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/6-x-1-1-x-6-john-bloomberg-rissman.html
by John Bloomberg-Rissman.