I have written a poem called "Soft Toy," which
has as a subject more the disembodied voice of purpose.
The sort of thing that Dick King and the long dress embody
is what I am trying to describe in this.
It's also very intimately connected
with my understanding of the poetic impulse, which
has a great deal of what I believe
about poetry and people.
The image of the poem is of any soft toy, any teddy bear,
or stuffed animal that children use and abuse
in the process of growing up and which they throw aside
when they have matured.
"I am soiled with the repetition of your loves and hatreds
and other experiments.
You do not hate me crumpled in my corner,
you do not love me a small heaped corpse.
My face of beaten fur responds as you please,
if you do not smile, it does not smile.
To impatience or distaste it answers blankness
beyond your goodwill, blank conviction
beyond your understanding or mine.
I lie limp with use and re-use listening
loose ends of conversations, hesitations, half
beginnings that peter out in my presence are enough.
I understand with a flame of shame
or a click of ease or joy inert knowledge into resignation.
The process drives deeper, grows clearer eradicating chance
growths of desire and colder all possibilities of desire.
My button brown heart eyes fix on your need to grow.
As you crush me with tears and throw me aside most
they reflect but something absorbed
brightening in response with energy
to the energy of your changes.
Clutched tightly through the night,
held before you ragged and quietly crumpled as you thrust
our thrust in dulled terror into your opening brain I face
the dark with eyes that cannot close.
The cold outermost points of your will
as you sleep between your--"