Whatever I was thinking of & 3 DeKoonings
by Bob Holman
[ poetry - july 02 ]
Whatever I was thinking of
What could I have been thinking of!
Thought. I was a-thinking thought. All
I was was thought and I needed to get "it"
Out. It rhymed. It was a story, an image
Slugs your face like a lost skylark, timed
Like a suicide, the Thought countered.
Hey wait, I am the thought! But inner
Workings, well, who's to know till "it"
Gets out. Even a Poem turned to the wall
You can read the shadows, it is pre-writing....
It is, as Prof. Ong says, "nested in
Sound." Where does the ong come from?
From song. Wrong strong gong daylong
Dipthong. Playing ping pong with King Kong.
Sigh. How much terror can one life hold?
The way you held me, that death smell.
Can the idea of thought keep Death out?
I thought you were dead but it was me.
My father, the suicider, and then my step-
Father followed and as ever, yours, father-
Less. I always feel like a fatherless child.
It took vowels to develop analytic thought,
They go cheek to jowl. Like the saying,
A picture is worth a thousand words, why
Is it a saying? You aughta be a picture
Of a man crying with a child crying beside
Him and an unspeakable wind, idiot,
A fog with two lights sticking out of it.
Sure they go up too far, illuminating
Nothing and they are in the wrong place
Too, but what would you have us do?
Now we are us, we are all thinking about
Every skylark, accident after accident
Until the horrible truth finally dawns: it's
Dawn and you are still awake and the streets
Are long and lonely and dark and Mr. Ong's
Guitar gently weeps. I think I want Mr. Ong
To be my father. That thought rapidly passing
The other way a fireman heading up the stairway
Looking for the fire while the bodies fall
All around. Apples. Gravity. The Afterlife. Suddenly
Praise poems are obituaries, Papa Susso taught me that.
If you listen, the walls will speak the Poetry. Writing
Is Death. So busy remembering everything he forgot
To do anything worth remembering. Get milk.
A singalong, passed on and on generationally till
It loops into an epic. Read that back.Dadotdit. Thought
Is sound. A brilliant collapse, what I'm saying
Through corpse: Thought reinvigorating. It's
Agonizing Everso. The Year of the Grandson. Hello.
End of Final Message. I'm happy, why did I say
That? Contained, under the hat, universe condenses
Into single image, image of song, song of a
Painting, painting of dance, a dancing poem.
3 DeKoonings
Under bough folds, a poor woman sleeps poorly
In the complex branches, a broken neck's angle fits
Off to the side don't look go off to the side off
