mmmdcccxlviii

     I just like living,
     only like living.
              —John Ashbery

I’d like to believe this was at
least a bit he planted about 

reading these lines, his words, 

after he was gone.  But then, I 

really don’t know.  I’ve grown 

quite acquainted with what I think 

of as his humor, which is generally,

or more often than not, pretty

bleak.  A funny thing, certainly,
to be able, with some feeling of
authority, to think of him at all
as if I have even a general idea

of what he was doing all along, with
the sidewalks of words he built upon

which we walk.  Sometimes someone
else might pour a bit of concrete

or lay down a square set of nailed
planks into which to pour this salad.
I project this upon the man I never

heard read who wrote a grand sum of 

sidewalk collages from which I glean clear 

stories seen by endless angles, or be

come hard-set on how absolute the 

narrative that holds some of them intact, 

despite the absurdity.  You’d think him 

my favorite, but he’s not.  Frank’s snacks, 

Jimmy’s elevated lines of observation, 

these are more my cups of tea.  Although 

I don’t drink tea much, unless sprinkled with 

Splenda and dashed with lemon.  I should take

inventory of what books of his I’ve yet to read,

but each next time I reread one of his poems or 

one of his books, it gets better. Many pieces on 

the whole may not instantly be memorable, but

there are endless memorable moments.  That’s 

heresy to no small few, and maybe to myself; 

and just the opinion of one who reads him nearly 

as much as we dwindlers do.  Even if for me his 

tomes don’t hold what I’d consider my favorites, 

though, even among his spare, original and prob

lematic ‘school’ – I can admit he’s had profound 

influence on ME, he pops up often in these amassed 

virtual pages—more perhaps than any person or 

group save my own personal poem-swap compatriots 

(how I miss you all, too, from the JP elders, to my 

classmates weekend mornings at Anza Vista to the 

swaps at my short-term bachelor pad on Bush Street 

to the decade plus of regular swap-meets on that 

block’s upright corner, Pine and Mason.  I do mean 

these diversions, but not to muddy up what I was 

trying to say here; silly of me to do that.  Especially 

since Ashbery’s bricolage of stanzas and sentences 

DO, more than any one else’s, catalyze so many 

of these limitations that I fold into paper air

planes with which to bombard you so regularly. 

Which is a bit of a sullen if not just down right 

offensive metaphor, please forgive, my blips 

as airplanes that might crash onto your body?

Where, enough so that you can feel it, one 

may make an impact?  There’d be casualties, 

then?  Let’s make a pact that those who don’t 

survive the impact are also just metaphors, 

like the worst lines I construct.  Don’t kill 

them all off, please.  Because how sweet 

it’d be to have given you a worthwhile piece

of me, something at least somewhat real, 

like an injury that you might keep—if for no 

other reason than to remember me by.