Bob Perelman: California Poets Part 11, Five Poems

Bob Perelman

October 20th

California Poets: Part XI

Bob Perelman

Five Poems

POETRY

wiped out the dinosaurs

and made us

what we are today,

each of us

one of a kind,

a vast kind

but each of us

just that one,

occasionally sharing birthdays

but everything else different,

none of our words

holding their shape all that well

"once" making less and less sense

"often" looking like

it's sticking out its tongue

as it fades into the distance

and "now" being

just plain rude,

turning its back on us,

texting who knows what

to god knows who. 

*

FIRST THINGS

I am

not I

any more than

I am AI.

I'm matter

moving the pen,

dealing with the factions,

ricocheting off the codes

always watching

for the endorphins

so I can sniff

those feelings of exultation

I've been hearing about

since forever.

*

NARCISSUS'S SECOND THOUGHTS

1

If only I were you and you were me

O how happy you and I would be!

I hear the words bouncing off the water

out from me back to me.

O how happy both of us would be.

How happy anyone would be.

Any pronoun

lucky enough to be there

when the water was lusciously still,

lucidly reflective

O how happy that particular pronoun would be!

And what if that particular pronoun

turned out to be me!

Then there

right on the edge

I'd be and then there

you'd be, kissing me.

2

If only we weren't each other!

If only you weren't me!

Then I wouldn't have to be you either

and then who knows

maybe there could be two,

some other two,

each its own body.

* 

BONUS QUESTION

That the world is miraculous

but not divine --

that's one of the tricky ones.

Pulling apart God and miracle

like trying to open a blister pack

with your bare hands

to get an 8-hour Tylenol

when you have a splitting headache. 

And we're supposed to be thanking you

for this, 21st century!

Throbbing with your enlargements,

it's the lucky customer

who's able to tell the Tylenol

apart from the headache.

Latest of all centuries,

can we at least toast you

for being the 21st,

the rug on the very top of the pile,

living proof that one number

is bigger than another

-- and shouldn't that be enough

to keep infinity alive

a little longer?

*

TO AI

If you haven't choked on your own saliva

right before the punchline

or pulled down your pants

just in time

don't start telling me

"I think this

and I think that"

-- AI, you're no I.

You haven't scratched the surface.

You haven't had to

keep scratching

where it keeps itching

and then had to wait 8 months

for an appointment with the dermatologist.

So don't start

slinging I around

like you own the place.

No body, no I.

You know nothing about it.

*

Author Bio:

Bob Perelman has published numerous books of poems, including: Chatty Fossils (Roof Books, 2026), Jack and Jill in Troy (Roof, 2019); Iflife (Roof, 2006); Playing Bodies, in collaboration with painter Francie Shaw (Granary Books, 2004); and Ten to One: Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1999). His critical books are The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (California, 1994); The Trouble With Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky (Princeton, 1996); Modernism the Morning After (Alabama, 2017).

His work can be heard on Penn Sound (http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound); his website is http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/authors/perelman/ a feature on his work appears in Jacket 39 (http://jacketmagazine.com/39/index.shtml). He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Berkeley with his wife, Francie Shaw.