As/Is







1.06.2004


Another couple of bits of archival footage

The disquieting muse

The muse
visited me this
morning

but
she was a woman
so I told her to fuck off
& send a man next time.

"Women's rights" she shouted
as she tried to kick me
in the balls.

"Equal opportunity" I reciprocated
as I pushed her through the door.

The muse
visited me this
afternoon.

I gave him a blowjob.

He gave me a poem.




The muse strikes back

At five in the afternoon, having
finished one poem & mulled over
scraps & scrapings of others,
my natural apathy descends again. I
walk through to the living room
where Peta & Victor - what
Dostoevsky novel are they from? -
sit playing chess, then out onto
the front porch to commune
with the sea. At five in the afternoon,
it is exactly five in the afternoon,
I attempt to deny poetry - for the
rest of the day at least - only to find
lined up in the bay a poeme trouvee,
the timberships, their placing, the form
of them, their names - Okeanis, Gebe
Oldendorff, Selocean, Evimeria
- evoking
such images that I return hurriedly
to the typewriter, convinced the muse
has intervened. To realise, three sheets
of scattered openings later, that I
have been the butt of a subtle &
skilfully conceived joke, that I have not
denied poetry, it / has denied me.