the new cat and the old(er) cat just want to eat the other’s food. J in bed with the flu. morning coffee and puttering around, picking books off the shelf. and while dreading thinking about actually doing the accounting for the press, flip through a book and realize — both happy and sad — how many have done some time at that hallowed pity party:
SONNET WELCOME
To the 1981-82
Poetry season
At the Ear Inn
What a mess is everything
In this world we live in
François Marie Charles Fourier said in 1800
This planet should be sent to a lunatic asylum
But it’s not poetry’s fault
For being so concerned
With love beauty sex and ideas, money
All the preoccupations of the philosophers, thieves
& prostitutes, I myself make no image
When I say anything including saying
Let’s get on with our non-paying work as always
–Bernadette Mayer from Sonnets (Tender Buttons Press)
_________________
oh but relatedly and un, here’s one for the wall-lookers, one i can’t seem to get out of my mind:
By Han Shan
Human beings live in dirt,
like bugs in a filthy bowl.
All day long crawling around and around,
never getting over the edge.
Even spiritual masters can’t make it,
wracking their brains for schemes and plans.
The months and the years, a running river:
Then there’s the day you wake up old.
–translated by J.P. Seaton
