Pen

And of all the pens in the world this black ink one suddenly most

precious, most central and most lovely, the one I hold in my hand not

my hand, any hand, any hand at all that holds this black ink one

gently pressed down into forever, how dear the black liquor with

which men and women write as Johnson once wrote, though he did

not include women which I include here now and always, I exclude no

one, not even the monster of my dreams, always from black ink into

vapor and utterance, I exclude no one from the doorway of pen and I a

pen myself writing almost nonsense, gibberish, Motorola, my love,

my dearest foremost self, I most lascivious of verse and receiver of

verse, poem is the dark and light of myself, poem most high and

down in the gutter where I eat a raw radish like a shameless tart and

how even now within these words I can barely read them or make

them out for poor, poor penmanship that should shudder me into

holy moaning and prison cell though I am in deep, keening love with

steelhead, yes, I say it here, great fish, and ink, steelhead that are ink

unto themselves of great rivers and lakes, ink of the most chromatic

kind and metal head as I shiver here at this desk and whisper river,

river, river, ink of my blood as a quaking, wide-awake fool who is

faithful only to fish and poem and the fish that are poems and I

forsake all morality and grammar and tremble only with a pen and a

fly rod and once in a while a chalk board, mighty slate, where I fail

my students again and again and again though I am in love with their

youth and beauty, I am in love with pre-dawn poems, I am in love,

yes, with Russian poetry and don’t know how to rock it and page after

page of glasnost, Siberia, Walt Whitman, halleluiah, who loves you,

baby, Celtic crosses, the overgrown mossy kind, and one frayed

dictionary more thumbed upon, thumbed through than any Playboy

as if I have been making love to the whole English language and I

have and I have and I will and I am salmon struck, trout blinded,

spawn lover, instrument of crazy verse, official goner, fucked up seer

of vast eternal grasses, here now then gone forever, wind-blasted

root of a verb, bye-bye, hasta la vista, no one will ever love you more

with three-day stubble and dance move, holy pivot, did you see the

blue winged olives in the cold, cold drizzle, I am going there, my

hands a-tremble, holy fuck, one fish rising enough to save the whole

world.”