Somebody once wrote that when Dickinson says bee
She really means the clitoris
And another said that demon life for Keith Richards
Was nothing more than addiction to heroin

Dylan’s Mr Jones inadverently
Blunders into an uncomfortable
Homosexual encounter
And all art is traceable to mundane events

Alls I’m saying is
There’s gotta be some overflow
Beyond what’s on the poet’s mind
And how do you know what that is

Not that what I have in mind is any better
Bees put me in mind of bread-balls on fish hooks
Colorful pebbles rolling down a bank in New Mexico
And a girl with an epi-pen in her purse

I don’t know what to think of demon life
Other than demon life had got me in its sway
And to be under the sway of any force
Is to suffer the grossest of indignities

The poet tries to speak the truth
And the reader tries to understand
No problem if you have the self-control
Not to let mind get in the way

But matter is an almost equal problem
The head baboon and his emphatic tooth
The cryptographer’s enigma variations
The book the crown the jar the robes heraldic