Where Is My Own Irving Layton?

"I always think of something Irving Layton said about the requirements for a young poet...: ‘The two qualities most important for a young poet are arrogance and inexperience.’ It’s only some very strong self-image that can keep you going in a world that really conspires to silence everyone." 
                                                                                                                                         Leonard Cohen

Where is my own Irving Layton
an exuberant supporter
of my defeats?
Where are my true mentors, those
who do not drain whatever little is left
in my wallet or my heart or my marriage to the holy books? those
who do not diagnose me with anxiety? those
who tell me I am special? those who do not
themselves escape to a psychiatric ward
and weep and weep instead of owning up
after hearing what I have to say?

Where are my teachers? Where is the cure
for cancer? For pimples? Where is
what is not in sight? Where can I be blinded
by the light at the end of the tunnel? Where the train? Where is plastic surgery
without all the 'plastic'? Where have my prayers
gone? My Arabic? My childhood voice? My singing voice? Where
is my guitar? Where are the chords I'll never learn? Ladies? Where in the world is Waldo?
where in the world am I? Where the hell am I? Am I?

Where have you been? Where are you aching? Where do I
enter? Where is the handle? Where the decelerator?
Where is the world? To be? or Where do I buy rope?
Where oil? What precise spot on the ceiling
won't bear my weight and give me near-death?
A nirvana? An immortality in the present? A new outlook? New looks? This glorious spot,
this solemn Zen-master of a spot
must be found, warmer climates of the heart
must be found, cheaper plane tickets
must be found, better questions must be found
or I must die. But tell me:
Where is my own Irving Layton
an exuberant supporter
of my defeats?

New Notebook

I am not proud
that I rip off notebook pages
unsatisfied not with the content
but the handwriting

but this is the way the world is, too,

and although I can't say that I don't regret
the lives I've given up in the wind
more a papercut than paper
thin and soaked
empty space for the most part
skin and lines not blackened adequately
in battlefields and lovebeds--

but this is the way the world is, you say,
I could've been the solitary weak page
in the manuscript of an august masterpiece
not edited off, not quoted
while those pressed against me
would be caressed into immortality
by the generations of beauty.

Sancho Panza

I do admit I fooled around
with little Kut quite a bit
when I gave him this bloated mask
and such pretty people to meet

I put in him longing for home
then hid all homes away from him
when he found one I made him ask
whether it was worth the dream

Too much passion for a dead art
with too sparse a wordbook of love
the illusion of a great task
but shoulders not fit to push and shove

"Self-mockery in rhyme is smart"
he thinks, gosh, he will speak and speak
no glory in which he will bask,
not a single ounce of unique.

I do admit I fooled around
with little Kut quite a bit
when I gave him this bloated mask
and not the courage to quit.