It is kind of hard shaving your asshole.
It’s a bit of a blind spot really. I have many.
Blind spots, not assholes.
Why do I do it? I do it like I do many things.
Like writing poems.
I am wondering if poems are like assholes–
hard to find, delicate,
somewhere you shouldn’t go near with a razor.
Yet we feel compelled. I even listen with razors.
Burroughs wrote a lot about assholes.
One of his characters taught his asshole to talk.
It didn’t end well. I can’t help thinking,
if mine could talk, what would it say?
It always looks angry. At least in the mirror.
Mirrors are funny though.
In a car once with my brother, I heard
an interview in which DFW said
he believed something down to his asshole.
What he believed, I can’t remember
even at the time it didn’t seem
as interesting as where
he felt that belief.
I’ve never felt anything that deep.
Maybe my sphincter lacks conviction?
I’ll deal with that later. For tonight
my little rosebud will have to be content
with being groomed: bald and beautiful.
Now I realize a poet asks a lot
when he asks the reader to contemplate his asshole.
If you are still reading, thank you for indulging me.
I want you to know
I didn’t try to write this poem.
It doesn’t make any sense
but I feel like it picked me.
Where poems come from and why
is a knotted mystery to me.
Tipping my seat to DFW I never fail to feel
that kind of uncertainty where the poems don’t shine.