From Where I'm Talking

 

 

 

 

You will never satisfy the container if you won't displease

The cup.

 

The truth is that if you are willing to be a firecracker

You still must feel the passive guilt

Of the wick.

 

A lot I have experienced

And short the walk to the next rapport.

 

I am radiant.

I am diamond.

 

I am so excited by myself that

I take a lithium before dancing on the ledge

 

Of the roof that is my podium.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hungarian Border, 1970

 

 

Everyone in the bus had to wait in a shack while

We were interrogated.

Well, at least, asked questions.

 

I do not remember them.

Perhaps, they asked me if I was a spy?

Is that your face on your passport?

How come you are not married to Lauren?

 

The questions were not directed at me.

I just happened to be there and bumped into them.

It didn’t matter.

They were uneventful.

 

While we were standing there

I almost wished that they would shoot me in the foot

So that I’d have a good Cold War story

To tell my future son when I am limping behind him

Trying to find entertaining things to say.

 

 

 

 

A Bit of Bipolar Here

 

There are infirmities that don’t deliver themselves

Like an ad hoc nosh.

Arriving from nowhere in a food cart

Of paranoia

And mania.

I want to be crazy as chili con carne

But I can’t seem to get past the bland bun of garden

Place neurotic.

Oh maybe there is a bit of bipolar here

And there but I am getting to doubting the experts.

I don’t need a psychiatric degree.

I am magna cum laude in myself and matriculated

In chemical imbalances at a science fair.

Do you doubt that I am a genus

Of genius?

You piss me off.

You are a hydrant.

I am a dog.

I will bite your ear so you don’t hear what I’m thinking.

 

 

David Lawrence has published over four hundred poems.  His new book, Lane Changes, is coming out in November 2007 from Four Way Books. His documentary, "Boxer Rebellion," about his boxing career, played at Sundance Film Festival.