Friday, September 1, 2017

Kit Kelen #608 - Unemployed at Last



608
UNEMPLOYED AT LAST!
or
officially emeritus



on the occasion of his completion of the academic life cycle


this is a special notice to everyone who told me that doing a PhD
was a waste of time and would get me nowhere
(of course they may well have been right, depending on how you look at it,
or how you look at where I am right now)

*

a retiring man
ought to have time
to be sunshone
to stand for the rain
give ear

give notice
...
now I’m the dusty one
now I am home

so much of the unsaid still to say
yes, it’s today – first of spring
I declare

now I will say it’s my garden I tend

beginning the long read
draw the long bow
propose, contend –
run the whole meeting myself

too much ‘I’
too much of the fearful abstraction
too much advice to give

now I’m here
and so I’m gone
(perhaps it won’t be noticed?)

awareness of order is slow to come
and there is trying to grow
(take the chemicals!)

I’ve brought my own wobbles for the new terrain

do what you damn well like is first thing
first order
(no, let’s not say that)
so often the same as would have been

but
beat my own drum
just like little Oskar
there are several plus cymbals plus tum
it’s what’s prescribed
someone else can do cowbell

I think of Julia – fondest for-all-her-faults PM –
some days I’ll be the flowers arranged
and some days I’ll be wilting

surely now I’ll always have time for the sky?

all of these years
I slept in the drafts box
fearful of defamation

now I’m on paper again
I plan a lesson in my head all night
dream and what have I learned?

that I’m the poem every day
and a picture of nothing at all

soon I will be re-primed
accuse myself the waste of paint

aye aye and karumba too
how did that ‘I’ sneak back?

guess in the end it was all about it me?
at least let it be today

under tin no house ever humbler

bark so rotten with instinctive rats

I’m drowning neither book nor staff
I’m the one gets buried

from winding down to winding sheet
make my road long winded
I’ll have a brick wall for the end please
learn to ride with a cliff in mind
for flash before
and own implosion

still one gets wound up

among the all-to-do
this victory lap

then wreathe the salt-and-pepper scone
with the cherry’s bloom

yes, I am the god of hell-fire
and I come to bring you...

the world?
tell that silly sausage to wait
the world can leave a message

in time we become intelligible
or not

but
can I leave the diligentsia?

I’m Spring itself
and soon I’ll plant

is Soul the bright light shining here?
Soul doubts that I exist

I have a fire to paint the walls
and warm by

and yes the farmer’s friends stick to me
yes the fireweed’s spread
lantana?
will I laugh it off?
or mattock in the mud?

all that I belong to’s here

carpe diem
triumph of the gradual
of gradualism for creed

Epicurus, bear with me
I’m the alien spore arrived
mulch everything to poetry

still I plan to disappear
love how you do that
and you’re still with me

if there’s order
then I reverse it here

a pen runs out
not me

I make it all up from scratch
and every god’s an oar in

it’s every damned thing educates

I’m a ruin
alone in the level sands
and bound to slip away

the last box winks at its unpacking

that least thing I’ve tucked in there
for excavation later –
that has to have been me

all good!

it’s as if life were precious
and here I am – splash
(as was agreed)

in skin and out
at a stretch

these sails must fill

I guess I ought to take a class
I should

be in and of this breath
with me
here in these words
now 












2 comments:

  1. Ha! You served your sentence. Now you're out. We won't stop writing. Will we ever stop teaching? Enjoy :)

    ReplyDelete

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