maybe I have fallen behind, am falling, but I think of myself as having people

Tonight I can't remember why 

everything is permitted or, 

what amounts to the same thing, 

forbidden. No art is total, even 

 

theirs, even though it raises 

towers or kills from the air, 

there's too much piety in despair 

as if the silver leaves behind 

 

the glass were politics 

and the wind they move in 

and the chance of scattered 

storms. Those are still 

 

my ways of making and 

I know that I can call on you 

until you're real enough 

to turn from. Maybe I have fallen 

 

behind, am falling, but 

I think of myself as having 

people, a small people 

in a failed state, and love 

 

more avant-garde than shame 

or the easy distances. 

All my people are with me now 

the way the light is. 

 

[Ben Lerner {1979- } ‘No Art’, from The Lights: Poems]