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‘Being so caught up So mastered’ Yeats     I was too shy to say anything but Your poems are so beautiful What kinds of things, feelings, or ideas inspire you, I mean, outside the raw experiences of your life? He turned a strange crosshatched colour as if he stood in a clouded painting, and said, Thanks, but no other phenomena intrude upon my starlit mind     I see you are wondering what this is all about Don’t mind me, I’m talking to myself again Yes, poetry is nice and often beautiful, yet it doesn’t beget much attention, money, or even a simple thanks for placing the best words in the best order That’s when I forget all about your incessant demands, and the restless subject leaps the stream in Technicolour— until the Remembrancer appears and says, Stop this wasteful life     Doctor, lawyer, thief These fancies of yours could cost a life or worse, two Meanwhile, he perceives my gifted body upholding my mind as I’m explaining my stuff on the Unicorn Tapestries, cheeks starting to colour, feathers ruffling, quiet shudders He shrugs, Your content sounds too beautiful but I’d like to read it sometime Okay He says all the right things, like I love you Hyacinth Girl Things get interesting until the sudden blow: Thanks     For the memories What I’ll think seeing his new work in The New Yorker is Thanks for nothing, asshole, as he drops me for that prolific pastoral life with his wife upstate The more I think about it, it all depends upon your phantom attention Surely a world embroiders itself in one’s mind at any moment, words resounding, ardent present clarifyingly beautiful And beautifully truthful You know? Here I should put in a lapis colour     Or a murky midnight blue Or have the crowd stagger by in a riot of colour pinning down the helpless beast with spears and ritualistic thanks to their gods What one really wants to get at is the real, the eternally beautiful like The White Album or something That’s what makes one perilous life worth living All the brute indifference, humiliation, and failure can put one in the mind to give up, freak out, kill somebody, heart battered, so mastered Oh you     Wherever I go, on the subway, in my cubicle,