Free Katie(A found poem)
I had surgery.
Awesome!
The Minute Clinic
scheduled a week's vacation--
not for the fame, the money,
or even the women--but I
can't prove it.
I know with metaphysical
certainty: we all
do a little of the Prufrock thing.
I wear a lumpy badge.
The other is class.
If it isn't a distraction (and
it never is), we're not privy
to all the background
insanity. Fuck if I'd
want to work in such a place
with real world pals, cans
of beer, and trash TV.
You're absolutely not
alone, a typical rookie
mistake. I'm not Mommy.
She was above my
station. I wish I was
a jock on the footpath
connecting the football
stadium's lights.
I've heard that the German
language is hard. If your discipline
is very quantitative, I am left
wondering if you're making up
a problem when none really exists.
Guilty, right? I assumed
this would be seen as a love
offering, loveliest, most insect-
ridden, coldest...whatever.
I hope I've straightened
it all out. Fab is, well,
I'm fab. So not to worry.
If you go fully Cartesian
on this one, the only thing you know
for sure is that you are real.
Long live the misery.
I haven't fully decoded the composition principle, but this is genius. Also, hilariously kinda mean title.
ReplyDeleteYou plagiarized us!
ReplyDelete:-)
I have been sitting on my front porch drinking wine every night this week, but no one has come and spoken to me! What am I doing wrong?!
ReplyDeleteOh, what a gal! A real piperoo.
ReplyDeleteLove. Will you be my BFF?
ReplyDeleteBrilliant! I'm a bit alarmed that I can identify most of the sources, but brilliant nevertheless.
ReplyDelete(But I really think we ought to give the Katie thing a rest. It is amusing, or at least mesmerizing, but also -- even without being certain what happened, which I'm not -- sad, and perhaps even a bit scary.)
Kudos to CM's poet laureate on another brilliant job.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, we really do need an anthology of CM poetry (mostly Greta, with some selections by Richard Tingle, and perhaps Yaro, who probably qualifies as a prose-poet), accompanied by cartoons from Sam Folkchurch (where is Sam, anyway? I hope she's enjoying her summer. And is Yaro back from his cabin yet? I'd love to hear his thoughts on the approaching semester, which I suspect are more cheerful than mine -- though it's actually not the approaching semester, but the dwindling summer and my stubbornly long to-do list, that are bothering me).
ReplyDeleteThanks, CMers, for the kind words. This is a vent every bit as cathartic as any of my straight-forward, student-crushing, soul-sucking prose rants. I'm trying to explore the possibility that venting doesn't have to be mere bitching.
ReplyDeleteAnd, for the record, this poem isn't about Katie, CC. It was inspired, certainly, by that episode and especially by Bucky's exclamation, "FREE KATIE!" in the comments that followed "Katie Kerfuffle Kaput," but it's not at all about Katie.
I do feel better having cobbled it together, though.