Thus Far Pt. I

"Doesn't it bother you?" I mumbled and pulled covers higher
Like skyscrapers and monuments that I am
Terrified of large gestures in general
What a response to have to generate
I feel so ashamed to stay silent and fearful
But I need a signed human contract
To make me certain of my safety
That a negative someone won't steal my chances
Because I don't want to hang in a student R.I.P. gallery
Dust gathering near my golden retriever retrospective
Creeping, crawling, like we're all aging
All in this hopeless raft climbing escalators
To nowhere but more freedom
More bright, white danger to fill in
Like a baking sheet or a time clock
I don't want to hold any time laden symbols
But instead I'm left holding all of my baskets
Full of blame, dyed on Easter afternoon
After the service, I am post quiet time revival
Crawling like a survivor hoping someone tells
Everyone and they open up their arms
Throne me and name dances, cereals, etc.
So that someone can tell me how much I cost
How many years dreams plus natural time adds to
Some unnamed, ritualized man to inflate me each morning
Pen my memoirs and set unjumpable stones
For future generations to puzzle on jumping for
Because Wordsworth never saw my post-recognizable times
He had no knowledge of what contracts we'd sign
How everything peters out and how we well
The past for self said prophet assholes like Blake
I want Coleridge's eloquent complications but
Not perhaps with all of the opium
If people want to string up my corpse to tell
That it could have achieved then what of it
Trick me to the death and use me as I go
As whatever I will mean then, if substantial
Like Milton, like Shakespeare, in round amphitheaters
Crumbling marble that pigeons fear to shit on
Hold our bonny Sunday hats out to block the shots
As if we just believe that it's always universal
Long ago a savior came to save us all from invention
After 1979, everything was finally said
Like I'm digging in the king's golden trash can pages
To return to my children and vomit on their tin plates
I'm so starving, hardly digging where I can
Picking up my rattle and noting down the noises
A zoo for inane animals, no one attends me
Where is my kinship, my author's circle to brew with
Gone away to Washington, to St. Louis, biding time
What have I cracked open and spilled out here
That I am made to operate that my blood has never
Flowed in any other veins but my own
Somehow though, my words have all tramped down
The same main drag through London's weary streets
Past the Thames and wherever else there is to commonly wander
I would drink the river if it gave me some chances
One handful of seeds to scatter bravely
As it is I must scatter ill conceived pebbles only short distances
Where crows peck and examine, pretending to find bits of wafer
The blood they desire sits in a river in the sky
Where chariots blaze by and crash majestically into progress
Miraculously, everything is achieved if you look at this sky scene
While you upward gaze, clutching at decorative tombstones
I have been toiling and wrangling, in what seems a cellar
The trees do not call to me but voices that I hear
From what loves you and what connects anything
But there is nothing to sense clearly or suddenly
I have trampled this point and won nothing
Simply because there is nothing to be won at all
I need no prize to start from but a cover for flame