Michelle

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Dream Song 14
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,
Who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

John Berryman
Exile
As I speak, a wave drenches my face. Ovid
I am a current I cannot call home.
I am the blackest churning of tide
against left-handed shore,
a reef into which the lost fish bump,
an unfathomable city of the deeps.
I would call out your name,
but how could you hear me
over the rush of water breaking
against those who swim near me,
drowning my voice with the splash
and kick of their loud dying?
I am here, I am here, my tongue lost
amid the waves' black wagging.
Death flows into my open mouth,
turning me to sea when I would be river:
I who lie here,
poet of tender passions,
fell victim to my own sharp wit.
Passerby, if you've ever been in love,
don't grudge me the traditional prayer:
May these bones lie soft.

Michelle Gould