POINTS ON THE GRID
George Bowering
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ACADEMY
Is this any way for a man to live?
Up early in the morning to the danging orchestration
of two alarmclocks,
.................................out, toothpasted,
............................................................into a cold car
and along a boulevard to buildings full of freshmen,
books open ready for me to walk in,
deliver three cute jokes
....................................and ease into a discussion of
Literature?
Other mornings twisted at noon
in a turmoil of sweaty bed wrappings
lying there
knowing I don’t have to get up for another half hour
and walk on the dusty floor in my bare feet
to the bathroom
............................to the car
.............................................to the buildings full?
Vachel Lindsay kicked thru the dust
all over western America,
selling poems door to door
..........................................for his dinner,
little Tommy Tucker with an ode
and a stomach full once a day
tramping it with a big bass drum in his head
and no three jokes a morning
.............................................to deliver.
It’s all a big DREAM
Vachel Lindsay killed himself with rat poison
/perpetration of myth, more patterns for
Romantic Poets and Romantic Poet Professors
——and there’s me, racing the car out the road,
late, running over suitable only blue-shaded stories,
kicking my way thru someone else’s dust.
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