My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

84 c L A IRE - I N - THE - B U I L DIN G
anything? No can't do. "(
learned to read by watching
Wheel of Fortune when I was
a baby." By the time I was 5
you couldn't tell the slippers
from the geese. That's right,
go another half mile up the cliff
and take a sharp left immediately
after where the ABSOLUTELY NO
TRESPASSING sign used to be,
you know, before the war.
Like the one about the chicken
crossed the street because he
wanted to see time fly or because
he missed the road or he didn't
want to wake up the sleeping caplets.
A very mixed-up hen. "No, I can't,
I never learned." By the time
you get up it's time to
go to sleep. Like the one about
the leaky boat and the sea's
false bottoms. Veils that part to
darker veils. So that the fissure
twisted in the vortex. Certain she was
lurking just behind the facade,
ready to explain that the joke had been
misapplied or was it, forfeited?
Never again; & again, & again.
"Maybe he's not a real person."
Maybe it's not a real purpose.
Maybe my slips are too much
like pratfalls (fat falls).
Maybe the lever is detached from the
mainspring. The billiard ball
burned against the slide
of the toaster (holster). That's no
puzzle it's my knife (slice, life,
pipe). The Rip that Ricochets around
the Rumor. As in two's two too
many. "I thought you said haphazardbut
if you did you're wrong."
If you've got your concentration you've got