Excerpt 3 from Common Time
When seeking something,
we often encounter Aristotle’s aphorism
in which our failure to achieve something
is a failure of will rather than something innate.
Like finding pot ‘if I really wanted to, I could,’
when ‘could’; is a term
incongruous with the figure speaking it.
It was a shirt
that read ‘travesty’
rather than being a travesty.
I’ll be the judge of every Winnebago.
And from the clouds emerges a ship
from the ink which is
the tattoo which is the image
of something punted.
Rule number one in the city: you never just *throw* yourself down on a patch of grass.
The rubber band sits on the counter, fastening nothing.
(Originally published in Zoland Poetry)
