Salutation

"I'll have to ask you to repeat that.
What did you say?" "No problem.
I said you're quite a young man to have
developed a case of amnesia as advanced
as yours." But he was thinking of writers
who bare their souls in popular magazines.

They confess their vices in such magazines
as "Spank," "Ms. Fortune," and "Beat That."
That's the thing about ambitious middle-aged writers
who used to be young: each has a secret problem,
and if they confess it, they think it will advance
their careers. All believe they have

not been appreciated enough by lovers who have
cheated on them as by philistine editors of magazines
who commission out of hope and edit out of fear. The advance
on their next book is spent at lunch, and that
isn't funny. Six out of ten have a drinking problem.
But when was that a bar to their need to be writers?

To write a best-seller is every writer's
fantasy, and if you write three or four you'll have  
retirement options beyond the usual. But look at the problems
standing between you and your modest goal of magazine
publication, a tenure-track appointment, and that
sexy partner you're trying to impress. Advance

praise has to be got from writers who've advanced
to the fore. To join the ranks of such writers
may, however, seem a less worthy goal now that
you've met the vain jerks who have
seized the means of production. Still, these problems
exist in order for you to solve them, and in your own magazine—

the apotheosis of a modern avant-garde magazine—
you may disdain to publish anyone save those with the most advanced
views, though that path may create yet more problems.
For often the most talented writers are not the writers
you'd like to have dinner with, have drinks with, even have
an elevator conversation with, about this, the other, or that.

To sum up: to publish a piece in that imaginary magazine,
you have to have an advanced case of something,
some marvelous incurable problem that will make you a writer.

Days of Penitence and Awe

In temple I prayed
and chanted Holy! Holy!
Holy! And was scared.

Father forgive me.
For what? For things done, not done.
The time I wasted.

For "scared," read "sacred,"
its anagram. I am, said
the Lord. The terror!

The terror! Isaac
knew it. But do we? Faithless
friends exit the scene

after wasting years
playing Falstaff drinking and
praising his own past.

He believed in what?
In Prince Hal, who loved him but
had to reject him.

What do we believe?
Money money money said
Roethke and Lawrence.

We believe that life in
an office is hard work and
a cocktail at five.

We believe in pills.
Chemistry and medicine
can make us young. Vanity

fair as life is not.
We believe there are two outs,
bottom of the ninth.

Bottom of the night.
Vulgarity supreme, a
loud new century

of madmen in robes.
People have asked me what is
my favorite word.

I say "you." Sometimes
I think the most potent word
in English is "Jew."

O could I absent
myself from my daily rounds!
I would return as

the count of Monte
Cristo or Joseph revealed.
So I fondly dream.

Just so my mind roams
while the rest of me sits here
in temple and prays.