being through

the last of the children
has nearly grown
three more years

the empathy never ends
their pain, mine

nothing I can say

They must endure
I must endure

And then, the writing
Dan writes for free, with glee

Chuck writes for free
"I am nothing but busy," he says

I close my eyes

remember
vainly
in vain

children as children
and the work that mattered
back when

David Foster Wallace

It is odd that both Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace have lived in Urbana, something about the twin cities, something about the corn, fertilizes a certain way of thinking, perhaps. The obituaries say too little about DFW's mother, Sally. A few years older than me, she acted on the stage at Parkland College where we both taught. Her hair was naturally white, not from age. She was a fine actor, a very keen mind, and kind. She always resisted the fame of her son, rolled her eyes. But I couldn't read DFW and still cannot. He says he wanted to write something sad; most people called his work funny. Not me. He was right the first time. It was sad. All those cultural references and bizarre combinations and complications of culture. I think the event of Sarah Palin killed him, something so absurd he couldn't have invented it even in his wildest dreams, and coming on the heels of eight years of cultural, theocratic chaos and war, following in the footsteps of September 11, by days. I understand his sensibility, even without having read him, much. He had stopped giving readings. I saw him read at Pages for All Ages back when he did. He wore a leather jacket. We share only a nicotine addiction in common, a smokeless tobacco affliction. My basement is still flooded. This old house is crumbling and we will sit in it and watch the world float away for the years to come. We cannot leave. Days like this I am relieved to be an appreciator more than an artist, a critic more than a creator.

poetry readings

by Charles Bukowski

poetry readings have to be some of the saddest
damned things ever,
the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,
week after week, month after month, year
after year,
getting old together,
reading on to tiny gatherings,
still hoping their genius will be
discovered,
making tapes together, discs together,
sweating for applause
they read basically to and for
each other,
they can't find a New York publisher
or one
within miles,
but they read on and on
in the poetry holes of America,
never daunted,
never considering the possibility that
their talent might be
thin, almost invisible,
they read on and on
before their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,
their wives, their friends, the other poets
and the handful of idiots who have wandered
in
from nowhere.

I am ashamed for them,
I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,
I am ashamed for their lisping egos,
their lack of guts.

if these are our creators,
please, please give me something else:

a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,
a prelim boy in a four rounder,
a jock guiding his horse through along the
rail,
a bartender on last call,
a waitress pouring me a coffee,
a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,
a dog munching a dry bone,
an elephant's fart in a circus tent,
a 6 p.m. freeway crush,
the mailman telling a dirty joke

anything
anything
but
these.