Making Art In America Is About Saving

There Are People Who Live Inside Their Heads And Their Intellects. It's Something One Is Born With And Stuck With. It's Not Something You Make A Decision About.

Here In The United States, We Speak With Reverence Of Authentic Experience. We Write Poems About Our Daddies Taking Us Fishing And Breaking Our Hearts By Making Us Throw The Little Fish Back Into The River. We Even Tell The Reader The Kind Of Car We Were Driving, The Year And The Model, To Give The Impression That It’s All True. It’s Because We Think Of Ourselves As Journalists Of A Kind. Like Them, We’ll Go Anywhere For A Story. Don’t Believe A Word Of It. As Any Poet Can Tell You, One Often Sees Better With Eyes Closed Than With Eyes Wide Open.

There Are Knives That Glitter Like Altars In A Dark Church Where They Bring The Cripple And The Imbecile To Be Healed. There's A Woden Block Where Bones Are Broken, Scraped Clean--a River Dried To Its Bed

A 'truth' Detached And Purified Of Pleasures Of Ordinary Life Is Not Worth A Damn In My View. Every Grand Theory And Noble Sentiment Ought To Be First Tested In The Kitchen-and Then In Bed, Of Course.

Wanted: A Needle Swift Enough To Sew This Poem Into A Blanket.