How to write a poem
in forty minutes if you haven’t
in a year is to say it’s like
trying to thread a needle
with icicle fingers, like
trying to start your car
after the state mental hospital
lets you out, like trying
to get it up for the camera,
like trying not to think
of the blue elephant
of the obvious, like trying
to escape the confines
of logic by describing
what it’s like to escape
description, is like
trying to decipher
the notes of nitrous rapture, like
throwing away old photographs
after an operation, like
hoping for an orange popsicle
downtown, like chasing Newton
with a featherduster, like turning
on the shower after all day
on the road, to see if it
still works, and getting lost
at sea.
The one about the mental hospital,
I like that one best.
July 75