The trees don't transform
like they used to.
Hills don't morph into
dragons.
These empty boxes
no longer soar through
the clouds

The trees are just trees
the hills, hills
the box, a box
if this is growing up
let me
          stay a kid
                          forever

Last week
I caught six fireflies in a jar
I put them in the microwave,
where they were promptly set ablaze,
and I said,
as they whirled around in the dead air,
“I guess fire flies.”
I’ve been waiting for the world to end since the day I was born.
When pressed for comment,
I respond by pushing the microphone
from my face
and abruptly ending
the interview.
I was told there were rules,
but I was also told I could be anything
I wanted to be,
and so far that hasn’t worked out for me.
I take 20 mg of fluoxetine every day
and six weeks later I can dream again.
Girl, it turns out I do have faith in medicine.
So tonight I’ll go to bed,
and tomorrow I’ll wake up
in another city
that I don’t want to be in,
and I’ll say,
“Resolved:
On balance,
I am a man of
chemicals and reactions,
of positives and negatives,
and while I may not know
where the **** I am headed,
it is certain that I will
end up there.”

"Why one writes is a question I can never answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me – the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.
...
"We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely … When I don’t write, feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing."
('The New Woman', 1974)

I think poets are aliens… from another planet
I mean, we must be
You have to be off your rocker to get it, to understand it…
I mean, is it just me…
That sees it?
The way we took grammar, complicated as they made it...
And blew the rules to the wind, we decided to ‘breeze’ it
We made up our own… and as a sensible man...
I can say, they don’t even need to make sense
Because they are what they are… poetic and intense
I really think we are not human though… I'm being serious about this
We go around seeing through a third eye
I know because I am about this
And we are crazy I tell you
We see the art in everything
We probably came up with the phrase ‘an about kiss’…
Or an 'almost kiss'… whatever
‘It’s either a kiss or it’s not, it’s as simple as that’...
The rest of society thinks… oh, but the poet would have none of that
We are weird I tell you
Us artistic types
We open our minds to anything and everything
We even befriend the mystic types
We would take it there… or allow our curiosity to take our minds anywhere
We would experiment to a point where we’re tripping out
We would… and you know it, just as long as it’s something to write about
This creativity thing is like a super power… **** it!
I rest my case… arrest me and take me back to my mother planet.

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of naught
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
    So true a fool is love that in your will,
    Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.