Tuesday Poem - Talking To You by Ken Bolton

Talking To You

It is 2 or 3 o'clock

in the afternoon.

I'm sitting here, reading

O'Hara's poem

the one that begins

"It is 1.55 in Cambridge"

he's at Jimmy's place (I'm

at the desk)

looking

sad &

wistful.

I am

too &

why not—drinking the

very last

of my bourbon, a drink I have

slowly developed a taste for

(since my

birthday, when I got it,

& now, nearly nine months later)

(Thankyou,

Julie & Neil).

In this poem

(it seems I'm

talking

to you now)

O'Hara says

what will happen to him?

& what about some

poems he mentions

What about me?

will I ever get given

bourbon again?

& what about the poems I might write?

will they ever get written?

& suddenly

an amazing self pity

comes

'over' me

I could almost have asked

those questions

seriously.  Otis

Rush is

no longer

on the record player

has not been

for hours

though the light on the record player glows

but the

intense sad notes

still 'haunt' the air, & affect the view

out

through

the bars

of the street

& factory

across the road, with their

own grid

of wire & bars

on all their windows

—staring back

the sunday traffic, occasionally, roaring past

I get up, & put on

Lou Reed's

'Rock n Roll',

which I love.  It

always makes the bars

seem more

neutrally rigorous

which is

how I'm beginning to feel

now.   I've

always wanted to do something

as good as

'Rock n Roll' though I'm

not doing that now.

but something continuously 'repetitive'

but not static

that moved,

that was

a continuous 'prolongation'

of a single

mood,

'intellectual'

but

unthinking,

physical

That's what I tried to do in

Terrific days

though then

I did not know "Rock n Roll" so well

though I must've heard it.

But that was partly my intention.

Something tells me

not to leave this poem,

as I   stand now

drumming on the page

interestingly,  to the intro to

"Sweet Jane", 'torn'

between the feeling

that I have

nothing to say,

& that

—if I leave it—

to pick up later

I will not

finish the poem

Here is just one of the lively pieces from Ken Bolton's Selected Poems, published by Shearsman Books. The book is extremely lively, and even borders on iconoclastic! I had the pleasure of hearing Ken read at Collected Works in Melbourne and my goodness, he can put a poem across. 

 

http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2012/bolton.html