I screamed at my dead
Don’t die, but he ignored
Me, I held him by
The eyes to make him
Remember me, I anointed him
With Crisco, and forced our
Big black lab to kiss
His daddy goodbye, I feel
Bad about the Crisco, and
Getting the dog all greasy,
But I wasn’t ready, I
Wasn’t ready, how could I
Be ready, we’d been together
Since I was thirteen, I
Made a film, excessive
in
Duration, about a
woman’s obsession
With Amaryllis Hippeastrum, when the
End came, the
catastrophic invasion
Of a despoiling
tropical mite,
No, she wasn’t ready, how
Could she be ready, I
Painted fifteen tiny still lifes
And placed them in the
Least most likely of places,
Pasted them to lampposts and
Road signs, pasted each in
Exactly the exactly right place,
What could be more idyllic
Than a loading dock, a
Warehouse, a factory, I filled
Them with entirely unnatural petro-
(Or is it poetro-?) chemical
Light, I know a woman
Who married Poetry
at least
Three times, I’ve seen the
Photos, protean Poetry,
how could
She be ready, sometimes Poetry’s
A man, a woman, a
Petro-chemical light, I took
Up painting, I went back
To Manet and Bataille,
black
Squares, impasto, abstracts, asses, mountains,
Plants that die, I obsessed
On evidence, commodities, places to
Pray, I tried to get
Some work done, I studied
My monitor, I expected to
See BIP, instead I saw
A series of colorful (petro-
Chemical?) rectangles, I took up
History painting (remember when that
Was the genre of genres?),
I made Dick Nixon flee
The White House, I brought
Ceausescu down, Mauthausen was two
Hours away by train, how
Could any fool think we
Were ready, have we ever
Been ready, we painted FREEDOM
On a chalkboard, god wasn’t
That a spectacular sight, stripes,
Stripes, stripes, stripes, stars blotted
Out from the sky, I
Made monuments for my dead,
I screamed don’t die,
the
Statues looked tiny out on
The lawn, under the trees,
In the white room, under
The white star-blotted sky,
Tiny, helpless, I remember us
Alone on a driftwood beach,
I remember a skinny man
In an orange canoe drifting
By, I remember thinking all
Of us, all of us,
Have to die, but I
Wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready,
How could I be ready,
I ate a sandwich, I
Drank some tea, I bit
My nails, I was alone
On a stage, I took
Up conceptual art, I rebuilt
The Bride, I
translated the
Master’s notes, but I wasn’t
Ready, I wasn’t ready, how
Could I be ready, though
I’d read every book on the
Intermediate State, I first came
To prominence in the
early
1970s with a series of
Subtle installations I
referred to
As ‘speculations about
space’, I
Got as crazy as crazy,
Mauthausen was two hours away,
Do you understand what I
Mean when I say thirteen,
I ate an apple that
Tasted like water, though later
I thought of it as
Sweet, I’m all pooped out
Questioning stainless radiance, the is
What it is, was what
It was, will be what
Will be, piling second-guess
On second-guess, worry on
Worry, I called one work
The Earth is Flat,
another
Say Hello to Peace and
Tranquility, one might have thought
Me ready, but the camera
Doesn’t lie (well, it does
Tell stories), I put everything
I knew into a giant
Drawing, but tell me, was
There one human being alive
In my city, when pigs
Fly, when stones float, when
A woman screams, I screamed
At my dead don’t die,
I put speakers all through
The environment and screamed through
Them don’t die,
but I
Really was nobody, I was
Only a story, I was
Only a story that had
To pee, I told it all
In a drawing, I filled
Every inch of interior space,
But I wasn’t ready, I
Wasn’t ready, how could
I be ready, I climbed
The space instead of the
Stairs, I screamed through my
Photos don’t die, I screamed
And I screamed, but how
Could I be ready, I
Feel bad about the Crisco
Getting the dog all greasy,
But I was only thirteen.