It turns out April is not “the cruellest month”, like T.S. Eliot penned in his poem The Waste Land. April is National Poetry Month, and Fintel Library plans on celebrating this by publishing a poem a day on this blog. Each poem contains a number in it somewhere, and that number represents the date that the poem will be published.
So, what’s today’s poem?
A Quick One Before I Go
by David Lehman
There comes a time in every man’s life
when he thinks: I have never had a single
original thought in my life
including this one & therefore I shall
eliminate all ideas from my poems
which shall consist of cats, rice, rain
baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants
red brick houses where I shall give up booze
and organized religion even if it means
despair is a logical possibility that can’t
be disproved I shall concentrate on the five
senses and what they half perceive and half
create, the green street signs with white
letters on them the body next to mine
asleep while I think these thoughts
that I want to eliminate like nostalgia
0 was there ever a man who felt as I do
like a pronoun out of step with all the other
floating signifiers no things but in words
an orange T-shirt a lime green awning
– See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16306#sthash.jwCQLPMI.dpuf