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Some Thoughts on Inability

     Say hi to jock-itch
                    —John Ashbery

The hardest thing I have ever had
to do is ask for money. I some-
how found a way to do it, on
occasions too numerous for me
to really dwell on at the moment.
I find myself in a situation in which
I may have to do it once more, much
as my life is much better than it has
been in years. I have a roof over my
head, my own little isolation tank, and
it would be a difficult thing to lose it,
even with my luck. But so it goes.
Money. And I cannot begin to
imagine what I would have done
nor what my life would be like
if I had not begun my habit of
begging online. For some rea-
son, it makes me think of my
fear of flying. I started air
travel in college, with a
trip from my home state
of Arkansas to New Orleans,
thanks to my good friend
Don, who allowed me this
one foray into the rich kids
way to do spring break, to
my mind, by letting me use
miles he had accumulated
with business trips, of which
this would be yet another
one for him. For me, it
was spring break. But it
was very scary to me in
those four airplanes (i-
magine, layovers in which
one has to catch a next
flight both to and from
cities in adjacent states).
I remember that there was
some pretty bad turbulence
on the second leg of that trip,
from Nashville to New Orleans.
But, for whatever reason, each
time I boarded an airplane after
that it became a worse exper-
ience, and more difficult to
force myself to even do, and
this when on for about four
trips until I could not do it
anymore. And I had never been
anywhere but the US and a bit
of Canada (driving, of course).
Am I perhaps suggesting that
the fear of flying is something
akin to the fear of asking
for money, and perhaps just
as ridiculous in its own way,
given the much-known sta-
tistics of how you are much
more likely to die in a car
than on an airplane, and
doing many more much
more mundane things,
apparently? Unfounded
fears. Things that cause
way too much stress for
me to accommodate. In any
case, I found the unfounded
fear of flying quite absolutely.
Fortunately, I found a way to
quell the fear after many years
of polling folks, be they acquaint-
ances, good friends or total strang-
ers, whenever I would learn that
person had the same fear. So,
as common as it was, and as
illogical, all I knew was that
I wanted to see the world.
And how would I do that
without flying? So for over
a decade I took a poll, so to
speak. How had each person
who actually overcame that fear
(which was not everyone of them,
of course) found a way to do it and
survive? Finally, after that decade
or so, I had enough research to
finally settle on one of the
most common ways these
folks I would query found to
ease if not rid their fear of fly-
ing, and I went with it. And can
attest that I turned forty in Paris.

My first trip abroad.  And

have easily traveled in
an airplane ever since.
Or for about seven
years or so, when I
could afford it.
This is very off-
the-cuff, but my plan
was for this it to be a humorous 

ditty on the importance of humor. 

I know that if I even have a 

point, I meander my way to it

if not all of the way through it.

But as for the humor, despite
consciously realizing it must
be an important part of my
work, just as it has always
been and continues to be in
life.  Not to even get into why
I came to such a pronounced
conclusion about anything, but it
has to do with the times during
which I began to write seriously,
and moving from Boston to San
Francisco about that same time,
and about why I read poetry in
the first place; all in all, it is
about me and my own fragile
baby values, which also include
things like honesty, which can mean
many things to me, a guy who realizes
it is literally non-existent on the whole.
That does not have mean the straight truth,
again, if such a thing even exists, but a-
bout my own desire for being real, some-
thing I was taught was a virtue, but found
no evidence of it (again, in whole) what-
soever. Quite the contrary. And along
with that honesty, which is what I call
an honesty of experience and curiosity/
imagination, which is not even the nirvana
of truth, but a truth that one might, like
nirvana, aspire toward. So it was inflected
with and even aided by such things as
my current mood and my imagination, not
only real events, but could be portrayed
fictionally, so long as it was in some way
perhaps too difficult to describe here,
honest to me and honest of me. This
would need to often include actual events,
or at least the things that went on in my head
because of whatever was going on around me
(or despite of it, perhaps?) and usually
included somewhat nostalgic or emotional
content, and what I may or may not have
learned about the moment, or experience, or
just as a way to relay it or what i was thinking.
Also important was gossipy stuff, a way many poets
got under my skin by interesting me in their lives,
wondering what was real and if it was, how the
rest of the story went. Hence my obsession
with O’Hara and, as it turns out in
some ways even moreso, at least as far as
the amount of reading I do, one vs. the other,
the works of John Ashbery; certainly moreso than
I would ever have known when I first started
puzzledly reading his books. But they have
become a compendium which I now think of
in the same way as a child I thought of the Bible,
or, probably moreso, The Chronicles of Nar-
nia or The Lord of the Rings. Like any other
form of art I had become attached to, the
one thing I could not handle was that what
little intelligence I may actually have feel
insulted or bruised by what I read (or saw 

in the cinema, or saw or performed on the 

stage, or heard in the music to which I
danced, etc.). When the stars aligned, as
they can more often than I would have
thought at first (even though, the truth is,
after finishing that first book by Ashbery I
certainly didn’t think I would ever be reading
anything by him again, which also pro-
pels my practice of reading that which
I do not understand or even like, trying
like hell to get something out of it; and
let me assure you that this can, for me,
lead to some wonderfully eye-popping
moments of enlightenment), the exact
opposite happens, and, say, the juicy
stuff, the esoterica, makes me want to
read biographies, essays, journals, what-
ever additional information I can get on
whomever this poet is or was who spoke
so intimately and interestly and hum-
orously and gossipy and often obvious-
ly out of love or extreme respect about
quite often the same persons on a regular
basis (yet the obscure singular references
become madly interesting, as well)—many
of whom I also desperately want to know
like I do the author. This practice is the
stuff of basic academic research, of course,
so is quite possible to do in most cases,
as it turns out. And this desire has pro-
pelled me along on this trek almost as
much as anything else I can think of. I
call it engaging with an author (dead or
alive), and it is the author I am most of-
ten hoping to get to know when I pick
up a book (of poetry, let me be specific)
in the first place. Almost without fail,
the desire is to engage.

Anyway,
there are other things, too but I was
getting to humor, wasn’t I? And, oh
yes, how important it was for me, even
from the beginning, to make absolutely
certain that my work and what I would
editorially showcase had plenty of it.
Humor. It just seemed something that
was lacking. I have come through
some times, recently, in which humor 

seemed to be extraordinarily absent, 

or unidentifiable at times. But looking 

back through this experience, and back

at my writing both before and during
the time, often when I do not
even realize it, I mix very low-brow
humor with topics or story-lines that
are of great importance, perhaps
severely so, to me. So there is a
bit of purpose to this method, of
course, and a lot of it has at its

center to simply engage, to give 

a potential reader the opportunity 

I had to delight in getting to know 

my heroes. And, after all, this is 

about me. But, also, about me 

engaging with you. So, if I can get
you with the fantastic jock-itch epigraph
at the top, and you get this far, then there
has been engagement. I may never know
you. But you can certainly know plenty
about me.  (If you read Roman Numerals
for example, just look at the number
above, each of the poems with numbers
before that can be found right here.
For those of you who may possibly want
to know more, however few might be
left at this point in this poem, for those
who have never read any of them before,
for example, there are ample means to know
me much better.)  A lot of what I do, I am sure,
is attempt to capture or mimic the things I found
in those poems by the folk I mentioned earlier 

(there are numerous others, too) that made 

me want to understand him, often to 

the point here it would literally feel

as if we were friends who would often
stay up together long into many an
evening or night talking, talking,
talking. Learning about one another.
It make me happy that I have not quite
lost my sense of humor. I feel a bit in-
complete when I offer something that
is seemingly too heavy with the lack
of it, but that seems important to me,
as well. Or something that is just plain
sappy, which, here I am, doing some-
thing like both of those example, and
without a lick of humor (or much, any-
way). And while many of you may have
gone further, and gotten to know me
personally, especially pursuant to
reading or hearing something I wrote,
that is huge to me. And I know how
full of ego that may sound, but this
method of trying to engage seems to be
one of the most genuine ways to begin.
For any of you I have jilted, by not re-

sponding in a proper fashion if you have
already attempted to reach out to me,
please try again. I do not prefer this
life of solitude. There is no one to
blame for it but myself. But however
I might act elsewise, I do this as a cat-
alyst for engagement, first and fore-
most.

I never got to meet Mr. Ashbery
(unlike so many of the poetic
heroes who have lived in
my lifetime, who have be-
come friends or acquaint-
ances or which I have at
least had the opportunity
to offer a hug or a handshake
in an effort to say they are, 

to me, hero) — I never
even heard him read. Not
that I did not have ample
opportunity. I think it might
be just because I was literally
too in awe to bring myself
to be there? But while
he can surely no longer
hear me and my feelings
about him, there is still
engagement between us,
and it is not just one-
sided, to me. And
I feel a much better
person for picking up
that second and third
and fourth book. And
reading and re-reading
many more. So thank
you very, very much,
John! Even and esp-
ecially for the jock-itch.
And thank YOU, too. May
you never leave the word,

with many apologies for

these silly once right here.

May you find in them a
bit of truth and humor, 

and perhaps even more

to cherish in wonder.