Support: Where Purpose Drifts

Support:

Where Purpose

                               

                Drifts

The poet is a great mute.  He wheezes his

infirmity, mumbles, stutters, fumbles; his great

error is human.

                                Anna Kamienska

But maybe the worst part isn’t

that it’s not

over, that I came into this thinking

exactly that

it was that I’d have

to step back into it

and I imagined the ring

ropes I was driven to

make my home over and over

and only when my fists

weren’t down and I saw it but didn’t

duck, the upper-

cut to the jaw I went through

the whole scenario and let him

beat me to the mat

before the bell was rung (it’s all in

the timing they tell me

later, maybe I could

have won that

round if the schmuck at the table

had been paying

attention, had looked up after

the fancy bikini distraction

to see me face it:

face on arms still loose

a saggy bag on each end

and he gave me over to the crowd

and if they could wouldn’t they come right

in wouldn’t they give

him an extra

thirty seconds and take me on

themselves wouldn’t they

make a flag

of my silk

shorts and rip

my cup up off my ass

and drag me

junk up

though the world

of their own luck-
lessness?

Ok.  Ok, maybe they’ll do just

that and after

throw the jock

strap in my face

and say put your cummyassballs back

in that

you’re gonna need something

motha-fuckah.  Or maybe

they sit stunned

when the bell’s late and the pugilist takes

his hay-maker swing

and it’s a thing of absolute

beauty they’ll say later

years later, some decades even

how they couldn’t believe

I saw it coming both eyes

swollen one completely

closed and the only thing I needed

to do was duck go in low

under the elbow and I would’ve

come out without…

Without what?  Everyone who saw it remembers it

perversely: some say I did

duck, some say I stood and took it

some say I had waited until his face

was straight away sane

in confidence of knocking me out

and in that split minute

between the rest bell the chuff up

in the bucket one last bloody round

I opened the ropes

and bent between their awed lips

and walked out

and that was the last

they saw me ever again.  It happened

like that.  But it doesn’t

stop them saying I was

there I saw the whole thing

she was going down it was the last

round and he swung and she took it

full on oh Jesus her head spun

didn’t it spun like a top I saw it

I was there, now you wait, wait till

she comes back

won’t that be a match won’t that just break

the bookie I’m gonna be there

front row

oh it’ll be the century of slaughter I can't wait
to see

the Beating of all Beatings!