Mutiny on the Borborygmus
There is the moiling hiss
of harbor brine at the side of the ferry, Jean Paul Sartre
at the bow refusing all forms
of "bourgeois stupidity." But what is
bourgeois? Is it a Bordeaux? A bordello? A borzoi? A borough or a type
of bottle? What's a bouton? A bowsprit? A Brahmin or a blood bank? Need
is simple. It is easy
to figure out need. Need is a macaw
perched on your shoulder, that loud raucous caw
a piercing reminder
you need a job, or you need
to quit your job, so you can get another job
to quit, & look for another job
But O, isn't it lovely to gaze at an apricot
some idle afternoon, & study
the curve of the jaw
of an adobe bubble
as it emerges from a Mozart sonata
when you least expected
the phone to ring. The eye is a large pool of water
Let us say lucid. It is a lucid
pool of water. Or do you prefer limpid?
Well then. Let us say
it is a large pool of words. A perspicuity
like a thumb. It is, in fact, very much like a thumb
& not at all like a thumb. It is whatever
enters the picture. It is the natural flex
of a leather glove, the largest
vein of an insects wing. It is anything
mobile or floating or coiled or scientific
it is anything but a job
because a job isn't natural
or specific, a job is a vague
displeasure, a poorly defined
tedium. Work
& play are words used to describe
the same thing under differing conditions
said Mark Twain who obviously
didn't have my job. Everything
in life is open to interpretation, & a job is a mood
like a basement
full of broken glass. Oh stop your grumbling
somebody with a job
cleaning blinds might say. Which is why I want a job as a metaphor
in a poem by Pablo Neruda, a thread of light impertinent as a thumb
Copyright © John Olson 1995
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