after a line by Wallace Stevens
I, bummed, looping my tinny beat,
alone by my mud pit, into big men,
numbly begin to empty an idiom.
I’m playing Me, bound not by time
but type—moody, benign, minimal—
implying I’m done, but maybe not.
I’m a dim bulb, empty, tying one on,
but I’m beyond my longtime pain.
I may begin numbed in to my plot,
a poet in limbo, but end mymying,
bumping my one byline to admit
I AM TOO DUMBLY IN MY BEING PENT.