"The Private Line."
This is a poem that comes from a fantasy
that I used to have I think when I was in high school
when I felt very alone and alienated
and I had insomnia a good deal at the time.
And I'd lie in bed at night and wish
that I had a telephone or a radio
by which I could speak to someone
else, someone important, someone metaphysical
if the opportunity were there who would just talk to me.
Say things to me like everything's
going to be all right, simple things like that
but directed personally for me so that I could rest.
This poem is called "The Private Line"
and it's essentially about that kind of experience,
a kind of free floating neurosis I guess
or a free floating anxiety.
It's me again.
Nights I lie hot under the electric light
deep in my own soup.
The personal radio I am desiring beats back,
Hello lover, home again.
The anxious angel wings in my darkest bowel.
That's Jonathan's bed singing.
I'm thinking maybe it's the mad who
circle up the bed springs or the dead are really here signaling.
For the sake of no one I'm still awake hearing
the filaments sing and no one is here under the angel's wing,
his irrelevant tongue in my ear.