I feel stupid these days.
How could you not.
I cannot rest, nor find
smooth burrow in which to read.
My books, my dad's books,
and mom has hers too.

The wine is medicine against
such chill.
the inner empty burn of
lonesomeness.
Three AM.
Dishes and laundry to do.
Maybe a spot of bachelor vacuuming
to get the pumpkin seeds
and the glass broken in the dark
tidied away.
Doomed to walk the night,
to "fast in fires" like Hamlet's father's ghost.
Self-entertainment,
when the television's blue light glow
gets to you.
One can understand why criminals
and Ernest Hemingway would light a fire
against such times.

Who is it who gives professors
the right to prattle on their wisdom
when mine, of no subject but
the earth and the salt in us
the sweat, the closed down sleep
of rocks, goes flying by in the wind.
A bird no one sees.

Most genius is
never realized.
It takes a special effort,
a situation, the right kind
of a guy, a lifestyle,
mark my words.
No care for hour nor light
but knowing that all comes from within,
that the creature can pick up any old thing
and make it work,
an old guitar, a toothbrush, a pen,
a broom.

All one has to do
is dream
is dream and care for all one meets,
his old mom, his old dad's books passed on,
even the work he does, as no one sees it so,
the work of heirs of holy men.