In Bed Now With Virginia Woolf

In bed now with Virginia Woolf
and Sigur Ros, after a late snack
of fresh blueberries in yogurt,
after an evening
with the Home Run Derby, after a day
installing blinds and washing windows
and writing while listening to Thelonius Monk and
Travis Tritt and Common, after a breakfast of
whole wheat bread spread thick with jam,
after the news from the BBC World Service
woke me into this day…

You of course now believe
that by knowing my list
you know me,
and you can go coring through it
to seek meaning, for in our time
it is our right
to define a man
by the products he says he uses —

unless of course I am lying
about some or all of them,
and in learning that you begin to know
something else
about me: that I am
as untrustworthy as any other poet.

You may then wonder
why I chose to mention the things I did mention,
and what that says about me,

and at some point you may begin to wonder
what it says about you
that in that list there are things you like
I may not, or that I may like
and you do not, or that you don’t know,

and then think perhaps that I do not know
some or all of them either,
simply choosing to mention them
and then identify the mentions of them
as potential untruths
in order to assist us both in reaching a point

where the only thing there is left to do
is lie awake before dawn,
at sea without anchor,
utterly disgusted with poem and poet,
stare at the ceiling in complete silence,
swept pile of books in disarray on the floor
beside the bed, radio broken, computer off,
stomach growling with hunger
that will not abate,

and begin to understand that some voids
in our understanding of each other
cannot be so easily filled.