BERNADETTE MAYER
I IMAGINE THINGS
It's a fine time to think it
I've got other rhythms and rhyme, time to think it's made by you, made by me,
what's the time I think it's a better time to sound it all out, I must have
found it all out before, before I saw you, before I met you, I think this time
I might know more than before, this is the first time I feel I know it at all
or all of it, too many people call, I feel I'm not a good poet, I'm half a poet,
I lose my poet hood, I don't compose knowing enough, I don't go far enough away,
I'm too close to mysel{ I don't lose myself enough, I must free the language
more, I free it too much,and now it's lost, lost to you and others too, I wing
it, I wonder about it, I indulge in it, I listen to every word, I sing and I
wonder every time, am I doing it wrong, I swim and I flounder, I go and I wander,
I see but I go under, and when I am simple it's too simple for you and when
I am wait, now I see what others are doing, they're imposing a discipline and
saying now I can't speak of myself anymore, I must describe the wall of bricks
and the little limited visa I've here, I must describe that man and his dreary
coat, no, not that, but an image become of him of his years and his industry,
further and beyond the lights of colors to what we deserve as we hear it thoroughly
through our ears, no even further, and with whom to share, the time to type
quotes out and make a system of thought, wait, stop endless rivers running and
the word "deserve" running through them tonight, what to make of it, what, I
still think more, I still think I've blown it or I've made it, I've taken too
many chances or I've not taken enough, is there damage, is there damage to be
seen so much later or to be swerved at in an instant, to be avoided, to be learned
about, books to be not only written but sent out, books to be deserved by everyone,
are there children in such a cloud ofhalfknowing, such a primitive cloud of
instinct and feeling only, no talking, are there children watching what goes
on, feeling only the unexplainable intensity of the house in winter closed up
with double windows, are they intimating a greater release, are they wondering
or suffering, just what are they doing, are they thinking, what is it, what
will I do, where will I enter my plea to be at the same time different and forgiven,
who will listen to me, and am I whole or am I all in pieces, one to be riveted
back to another, like the nervous doctor implied, how can I expect them to read
all I've written, how can I ever continue to carry you, carry you, through every
room, through every change in the light in the color, I see our images in the
glass too, I see myself and I see you, you point that out to me and I am charmed,
you point me back to my highly visual life, life of peripheral visions, life
of a good woodswoman, who will notice if I slip that in, who will care if that's
a dream I had, you don't pay, the loud sirens may now awaken you and I will
have to go and put you back in, sirens and cars honking and screaming as if
they were women in a hot-blooded movie, again I take liberties with you because
I think perhaps you don't even understand what I'm saying, who are you, are
you my daughter or are you my whim, my own excuse for living, the person I read
to, my actual mentor, the one who trusts and trims what I say.
There is a past each of us is given, no not given as if it's wrapped and then
presented but given in exchange for a moment of silence in the present, as each
moment of love is past as I fear so heartily the loss of it wishing it only
to begin again as quickly as the fire becomes the vivid red you cannot see but
only see in those bright tones that could be any other color, I love you then
in bright red, a color become out of necessity a denial, my sheer impatience
with the past has made me the genius of the tight palms, in the future I must
open them and bring out the shared color that hits me when I dare to simplify
and be brief in the heart that now, is looking at time, and stumbles horribly,
you are looking too, we speak these words aloud, in the words that my mouth
can form independently, I needlessly love you.
[Bernadette Mayer. "I Imagine Things," in The Golden Book of Words, Angel Hair Books, 1978.]