OK.
Now this is sort of the weird part of the challenge.
The ways, or I think a way, one of the ways
that surrealism manifests itself in the world, that the most--
the famous sort of what most of us
think of what we think of surrealism
is the surrealist image.
And certainly the show out here confronts us,
insights us very much with the surrealist image, which
is the thing that's usually based
upon certain things brought together out of context.
The famous quote, which was quoted from the Les Chants de
Maldoror, is as beautiful as a sewing machine and an umbrella
meeting on an operating table.
Well, in literature-- well for me,
the surrealist image still matters
but, what I'm sort of most interested in,
and I think the thing that surrealism feels very
alive to me, is this particular relationship
to the autobiographical urge.
And it's the notion that the self is something
that is constantly being made.
I know that my poems are autobiographical.
I just don't know who they're about.
So the next few poems are going to have maybe something
to do with that.
But this is called "Exit Exam."
It means basically that the self is not a matter of the past.
Self is always something that's been in the future.
Which is very helpful.
And it's a very different idea than the idea that poetry
usually presents us with, which is that the notion
that the self is a product of neurosis.
Is a product of the things the bad things that happen to us.
This is called "Exit Exam."
Difficult to believe what hurts so much when the cement
truck bounces you off a tree.
It's not solid rock knocking solid but electron cloud
and pulsing electron cloud around the overall emptiness
of matter.
A clash of minuscule probabilities
in the beehive of the void.
Somehow you're only scratched and bruised,
but the driver's in agony.
No license, no immigration paper,
a picture of his wife still in Oaxaca in his wallet,
five kids he sends money to.
So you try to assure him by hopping about,
to show no broken tears, which only
seems to him you've got trauma to the brain,
or were already loco.
Either way, problemo.
Your bicycle bent, he lifts it, tears
in his eyes, which are mirrors showing everything
on fire in black water.
This is the universal language of bent bikes, something
large and tragic in small words, while the world
burns in black water.
Nothing will repair it.
Is that true?
But now is not the time to bring that up.
You're both golden pepperoncinis in the vinegar of life.
So piquant, so sad.
There is a wound where you bonked against the tree,
and the tree, as usual, is dealing with its injuries
in a good mood.
A bird in its branches has just come to life, hideously bald,
eyes and open bulging sacks, too delicate, too helpless.
Yet there is a concept of the cosmos forming in its tiny salt
stall.
It gapes and mother regurgitates nutritious worm.
It grows a black miter, blue belly.
Next formation.
A couple false starts and presto,
it calls its mate radiant toy.
Its mate calls back, radiant toy.
It gets trapped in the science building for an hour.
Still it understands now more than we
do that the voice coming to us in our authentic bitterness,
our dark dread saying everything will be OK.
Bright opening, bright opening, where does it come from?
How can we get there?
And when we get there, will we be petrified or dashed
into even smaller pieces?
Will we be released from the new house,
or come back as hyena or mouse, as a rock, or a cloud,
will it be sleep's peace of nothingness?