Jack Spicer

[from Jack Spicer's My Vocabulary Did This to Me: Collected Poems, Wesleyan, 2008]

For Harvey

When you break a line nothing
Becomes better.
There is no new (unless you are humming
Old Uncle's Tom's Cabin) there is no new
Measure.
You breathe the same and Rimbaud
Would never even look at you.
Break
Your poem
Like you could cut a grapefruit
Make
It go to sleep for you
And each line (There is no Pacific Ocean) And make each line
Cut itself. Like seaweed thrown
Against the pier.