this morning i wrote this poem in bed and read it to Kelly. i told her i had written a poem that meant something for once. she asked what it meant and then i talked for a long time and felt i had said too much but she said she liked my explanation. i don't remember what i said it was about, i could probably paraphrase pretty accurately, but i'm not going to, i'm just going to title it "Pooem"--but now this whole thing in bold has become the title i guess.


for the sake of making fun
of space—

in order to use everything i know
in a poem—

i shit out what fish
sleeps still in my bowels:
what i know is something
like the sting of empirical dung
on my hole.
i don’t know what a tannin is—science—
but i have examined deeply
the beaded head of a broccoli sprig,
blotches in shrimp asses
much like my own.
it is a comfort to own your own bowl
for scatting
i'm learning—
by trial and error.

but for instance i think i know for certain
the slant of sun—
the poem—the sonnets—the Berrigan—
the one that hit me
in Mequon
after they extracted the rat
brain from my cheek,
but i don’t: tell me
what’s one word—
tell me one word
that makes the sun made of
real sun
or at least of a pulsing mote—
something more like the cat
shit i felt through a towel
this morning—
light a real light,
Marx a real armpit:
woolen.

revolting the way i know
to claim
the means of producing a poem
of my own:
i dipped a leaf in honey, clipped it
to a bank door—
called it a pun.

(what i know is to press up—
my bulb hits a notch—
and you come)

one word makes fun of
shit we spin and it is:
lint-pile-i-love-ya

and once again dig toward my ass
through my tummy.
space is a helmet with mirrors
for eyes in my mind.
this poem could not use all
i know / used all i know
in the lines about poo.