Kit Kelen #608 - Unemployed at Last

608

UNEMPLOYED AT LAST!

or

officially emeritus

on the occasion of his completion of the academic life cycle

this is a special notice to everyone who told me that doing a PhD

was a waste of time and would get me nowhere

(of course they may well have been right, depending on how you look at it,

or how you look at where I am right now)

*

a retiring man

ought to have time

to be sunshone

to stand for the rain

give ear

give notice

...

now I’m the dusty one

now I am home

so much of the unsaid still to say

yes, it’s today – first of spring

I declare

now I will say it’s my garden I tend

beginning the long read

draw the long bow

propose, contend –

run the whole meeting myself

too much ‘I’

too much of the fearful abstraction

too much advice to give

now I’m here

and so I’m gone

(perhaps it won’t be noticed?)

awareness of order is slow to come

and there is trying to grow

(take the chemicals!)

I’ve brought my own wobbles for the new terrain

do what you damn well like is first thing

first order

(no, let’s not say that)

so often the same as would have been

but

beat my own drum

just like little Oskar

there are several plus cymbals plus tum

it’s what’s prescribed

someone else can do cowbell

I think of Julia – fondest for-all-her-faults PM –

some days I’ll be the flowers arranged

and some days I’ll be wilting

surely now I’ll always have time for the sky?

all of these years

I slept in the drafts box

fearful of defamation

now I’m on paper again

I plan a lesson in my head all night

dream and what have I learned?

that I’m the poem every day

and a picture of nothing at all

soon I will be re-primed

accuse myself the waste of paint

aye aye and karumba too

how did that ‘I’ sneak back?

guess in the end it was all about it me?

at least let it be today

under tin no house ever humbler

bark so rotten with instinctive rats

I’m drowning neither book nor staff

I’m the one gets buried

from winding down to winding sheet

make my road long winded

I’ll have a brick wall for the end please

learn to ride with a cliff in mind

for flash before

and own implosion

still one gets wound up

among the all-to-do

this victory lap

then wreathe the salt-and-pepper scone

with the cherry’s bloom

yes, I am the god of hell-fire

and I come to bring you...

the world?

tell that silly sausage to wait

the world can leave a message

in time we become intelligible

or not

but

can I leave the diligentsia?

I’m Spring itself

and soon I’ll plant

is Soul the bright light shining here?

Soul doubts that I exist

I have a fire to paint the walls

and warm by

and yes the farmer’s friends stick to me

yes the fireweed’s spread

lantana?

will I laugh it off?

or mattock in the mud?

all that I belong to’s here

carpe diem

triumph of the gradual

of gradualism for creed

Epicurus, bear with me

I’m the alien spore arrived

mulch everything to poetry

still I plan to disappear

love how you do that

and you’re still with me

if there’s order

then I reverse it here

a pen runs out

not me

I make it all up from scratch

and every god’s an oar in

it’s every damned thing educates

I’m a ruin

alone in the level sands

and bound to slip away

the last box winks at its unpacking

that least thing I’ve tucked in there

for excavation later –

that has to have been me

all good!

it’s as if life were precious

and here I am – splash

(as was agreed)

in skin and out

at a stretch

these sails must fill

I guess I ought to take a class

I should

be in and of this breath

with me

here in these words

now