why i am not a thesis

the painter is clomping about
on the roof again, & that pile
of essays turns me to you, poem,
abstract dream of my thesis,
a way of working things out
where others have failed.

it seems i cannot avoid you forever,
now the money's running out
& Greg has his serious face on,
again confronted
by the story of my life
as things turn out
more autobiographical
than i'd have liked
despite my mania
for self help & time management
(ironic relationships!)

perhaps i should add you
to the pile of report cards
that said bright boy, but lazy?

now here i am, eighty-five
kilos of three day growth
& boyish is starting to push it,
drying out after the weekend.

you have become a plot line
in a minor modern novel,
or maybe
a Raymond Carver story,
three years as victims
of circumstance,
& if you don't like me,
i'm not crazy 'bout you either.

my sad thesis, you stir in me
a deep ambivalence.

there is nothing to be said
that could make
the slightest difference,
pointing out the degree
to which all nouns are abstract,
the texts of dead poets
less interested in me
than vice versa
(but a close run thing).

it's clear that we'll never make it,
& clear we must find a way though.

well.
let's put the kettle on
& avoid that marking,
& see what arrives
with the hot afternoon.

the neighbours pick mangoes
as i list some things to discuss.

drugs, of course,
& imagination.

romanticism,
whatever that is.

a list of things that exist
in relation to each other,
at least in so far as they hold
my interest.

(not very --
a joke).

& poetry, you are in there too,
vast headache that has shaped
my life. & death,
& australia, add them all
to the list.

america, Derrida,
the movement of desire.

my head is spinning already,
as it did on Saturday night
(the spirit --
spirits!
-- of empiricism,
stealing my money
& leaving a morose drunk
walking home).
& the questions behind that list.

the position of writing
against the world,
the text & experience,
imaginary & the real.

the search for answers
when i know (can feel)
the questions reconfigure
in the echoes of the voices.

things keep moving, & the world,
& all i need is the lens cap off
at the crucial moment
which will surely come.

careful with that optimism, poem!
we are being serious.

the artifice of it all.

where to begin? with drugs?
a choice that implies
a grounded causality
i cannot believe, privileging
science, & the chemical,
& hating the poems
for getting in the way,
a little piece of tinfoil-
wrapped god.

not likely.

the fact of the poems, then,
loose array of texts
to be placed against each other.
what can you tell me
that isn't about yourselves?

clever fictions, little machines
to create the illusion of presence --
is that the key?

pretty illusion,
holding things up in that gentle,
contingent stasis,
tracing the openmouthed links
to the texts of other poets
then closing the book,
letting it all move away on the wind?
the thesis saying little beyond
i can write a thesis
then sending me for coffee
with a pat on the back
& a handful of loose change?

perhaps.

but will you answer
any of my questions, little thesis?
or am i expecting too much,
like in that Dransfield poem,
dreaming of satori,
the sudden vision
or whatever it says?

certainly those kinds of revelations
seem beyond us today,
setting the fan on high
& measuring its rattle
against some asthmatic bird
wheezing in the garden.
time then to think of Forbes
taking the piss out of Tranter,
"don't worry, hard work & misery
will return," & of Ken,
the "terrible mildness"
of "life your weight."
in the end i find i cannot care,
even if this turns out
to be barely the middle,
& i wonder to what extent
this is generational
as my shoulders twitch
in their perpetual shrug.

how much copping attitude,
how much copping out?

i mean, whatever,
but it seems we are stuck
with each other, little poem,
so why not make some tea
& see what the words provide?

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ted@magicdog.com -- 29 May 1999