2:30 in the morning and I want
a really big cock, like a garden hose
to unroll and flop over the edge
so I can pee without getting out of bed.
I'm warm and comfortable and hate
my bladder so much I'm thinking
of sending it back to high school.
I get up to pee, come back to bed,
fall asleep and dream
I'm on the roof of the Tate Modern
eating a bag of Ruffles.
I'm surprised they taste the same
on top of all that art. A man
sitting beside me with a legal pad
and pencil is drawing the Thames
and the drawing flows. I give him a Ruffle
and he smiles like a horse
must feel when it runs.
The next time I look at the clock
it's 5:30 and I need to pee again
with my slightly-above-average-size cock
so I get up and paw at the sky
for the sun, but without claws
that can rip the dark away,
I'm screwed, so I make coffee
in the dark and wonder if my soul
is like the milk I stir in, something
that cuts the bitterness.
Now I'm writing this poem
and telling you
I'm writing this poem
in front of a picture of two arches
on the Brooklyn Bridge, which I've crossed
with and without Whitman, with
and without a desire to jump off,
and with and with and with
the hope that the heart's
the right organ to celebrate,
the right organ to bang on
until that sucker sings. Are we there yet
I keep asking the Earth
but it speaks a language
people don't seem to understand. On
and on, we go on and on, above
and beyond, and under the below.
And I apologize
for the product placement
earlier in this poem and promise
I'm not a spokes-poet for Ruffles
or the soul. I can prove it:
The soul is the whisper of fog
to a leaf; the soul is a Zippo
that can light a cigarette
underwater; the soul is a dream
of our nipples and spleens, a matter
of matter hoping it matters
that petunias and clouds and gymnasts
exist. See how wrong I am
about everything I say
but how I say it
as if leaping off a cliff
into the arms of the air?
That's how you know I'm a poet.