Thus: here are a few poems I would like to write. This is just as good as doing them, yes? And if I do them, I am just an overachiever. Awesome!
1) "Ham Sammich": This would be a poem about slavery. I think it would need to be a longer poem in order to justify "sammich" versus "sandwich" and the thought of sandwich at all. The Biblical allusion of "Ham" also seems like it needs longer to cure, or smoke, or honey bake. As I think about the length, it makes me think about the world a poem can make—here, a poem could make a world in which a poem about slavery would have to be called "Ham Sammich." What happens in that world? Why the dialecty "sammich?" This poem would be ridiculous. Hooray!
Oh, there was a line I really liked about a year and a half ago. It went:
"The body is a plantation of needs."
This became:
"The body a plantation of need."
In a poem called "Ham Sammich," would that line have to be:
"The body a plantation for empty."
2) Another section to the poem: "Thank you but please don't buy my children clothes with monkeys on them": This, I think, would be the last section I need to write, though it will probably go into position between the current third and fourth section (the ones with the cartoon tuxedo gloves and the proliferation of monkeys, respectively), though the current fourth will likely follow the current second (the one about the history of black baby tail circumcision). Hmmph. Of course, that would make it the last, unless the current third goes last (which it might). The new section will be the one where I might use the chimp who went crazy (or as Chris Rock might say, went "chimp") as a Trojan Horse (er—Chimp) to get at how people at the mall say how cute my eight-month-old twins are, but will probably clutch their purses and such when they see them in 13 years. I have no lines for this yet—rather, the ones I have are too too too heavy. Ham-fisted, so to speak. Here's two of em:
“oh but they must grow mustn’t they?”
“yes, and isn’t it awful?”
Isn't it?
3) "Worksongs": These were going to be a bunch of revisitations of the Herakles Labor tales, because what we need is another re-telling of a Greek myth! At one point, these were all gonna have one word titles (The one about the stables would be called "Shit." The one about the hydra would be called "Heads."); but then, I wrote a poem called "I was standing on the corner when I heard my bulldog bark" which I think might be a good way to deal with the one where Herakles kills the lion (since the poem involves Stagolee killing Billy Lyons and wearing his skin). This could be more fun than my previous approach, called "Lion" which had lines like:
great hope: man in a lion
skin is more man than ever.
you wake up one day
a lion in a city. you will be
hunted.
meh.
The "great hope" plays off a series of epithets suggesting "champion."
I said meh!
****
There's other stuff, too. A bunch of poems called: "A History of Negro Silences" (I wrote several of them, but I think they work better as studies; besides, I'm cannibalizing that title for a different project). A revision of a short story called: "Suhthen Ventriloquizardry as Jig-Breaking Catalyst." A satirical Western opera called Dead Horses… Perhaps if I accumulate enough almosts I could publish a speculative un-collection of poems! Perhaps enough almosts will get me an almost grant, which is when someone nearly sends you money, but just doesn't quite. And surely if I keep stacking up almosts, I can avoid writing the poem about the miscarriage, when I woke up to skulk of foxes stealing away from my wife, their red backs crossing the bed sheet, their tails disappearing over the mattress edge.
