"Item: the poet has to feed himself and fuck himself."

it's difficult to be left alone when you're home on vacation. and then, when it finally does happen, you pace the house wondering if there's anything at all you should be doing with your time. mostly i devour libary books or simply grind my teeth, but sometimes i choose to do stranger things. this evening, for example, i guilded a tiny plastic horse in a gold stamp inkpad. i've had both the horse and the inkpad for over a decade now and i am truly amazed that the two have never come together before today. why did it take me over ten years to entertain and satisfy such a simple whim? and why should i have done so just now? i cannot imagine what else i have tucked away in the drawers of this desk, what other childhood relics i've yet to guild or press together.
in other news, this is what i've been holding in my hands for the past few days:

what an ingenious cover for a book of poetry that cleverly describes the corporeal and erotic activity that is both reading and writing poetry. and how silly of me to only realize now that i've been lying in bed with and manipulating the body of a woman these past few nights. not that the poems themselves aren't screaming this very message, but i'm not accustomed to attributing such vocal wit and power to something as simple (and complicated) as a photograph. and honestly, i think i would have overlooked it entirely if i hadn't first consumed jong's poetry and digested the ideas verbally, which allowed me to then process them non-linguistically.
i've noticed the same phenomenon in another book of poems i picked up: "The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper." having somewhat of a ridiculous preoccupation with solitude, i snatched the book up without pausing to consider who in the hell Edward Hopper might be or what it might mean that this poetry was written in tribute to him. but i'm glad i did. why weren't picture books this wonderful when we were kids? each poem is paired with the Hopper painting upon which it reflects or builds, and i spent a good two hours objecting aloud and enthusiastically to the various interpretations and elaborations. but whether i agreed with the poem, the words became my decoder to the paintings. for me, nothing is graspable unless i've first slipped my hand into a glove of language, and only through that glove am i able to interpret and reshape the contours of the visual.

All for some bizarre hometown necessity!
Some ache still found within you!
Now it will go with you, this scene
By Edward Hopper and nothing else.
It will become your own tableau of sadness
Composed of blue and grey already there.
Over or not, this suffering will not say Hosanna.
Now a music will not come out of it.
Grey hat, blue suit, you are in a midnight
Diner painted by Edward Hopper.
-- David Ray

i need to read that before i can read and fully appreciate this . how absurdly inflexible of me, i know. i promise to work on it. and to guild all the tiny plastic horses i may stumble upon in my own amply few moments of blue-grey solitude.