You Never Know

It could have been so much better, the feeling
and importance so much stronger only minutes ago, but I am begging
the audience already, getting ahead of myself,
being myself, forgetting myself thinking
of importance again and I am smiling
and not quite where I was; and I think of the faces
of those that are buying into their bafflement, as they practice
their dumped Arnold Schwarzenegger faces
without noticing, as it could have been a 1905
paper or a “zoning out”; though it could have been a gunfight
too, or a fix from your last relationship or much better

and floating past without such itemised bits of everything, with a reluctance
to say ontology because you never know who’s been dumped
at this party: aren’t I smiling. I know where I am inclined to go now—
I know it too well. A good feeling just balanced
whilst thinking no one has thought
anything, especially relating to that discomfort
there because you wouldn’t have said it like that, would you. And you don’t like muscle.
Now I see where the problem is, so we better

just say a fog or something. Or was it a mystical experience?
Who made you remember that tune? Are you…
Excuse me: how we are inclined to move away. I almost
created an ideology and I am getting more… that. Am I

to know why I’m telling you about my history
of trying to get back with my partners? Are such things
warnings, though with smiles? Are we all physicists?
Am I begging? Is it all so clever? See, it happens
quickly, the levels where we want to keep each other at
to have meaning that is very tight, otherwise
we can all shout, the ego can drift in through the

poem and be felt and not stopped as I want you to feel…

whatever you like? Would you stay here? If you are still
at the party, is it where you need to be? Is it what we want?
Would you touch someone without fear
of that gunfire? Could you tell them? Are you crying too? Because

it doesn’t have to go out so far
when I have my car and I haven’t been drinking. Am I unhappy?
Do I really think I could be him? I didn’t even know I was going to come here:
I was happy in my books. I am so embarrassed—sorry.
I was trying to be clever. How far could we go? No—
you’re right: I am just one creature thinking

and joining things that don’t settle if at all. And you’ve been begging to dance for minutes.