I Fail As a Celibate

By Jerome Rothenberg b. 1931 Jerome Rothenberg

Despair leaves

a dry spot

the passage of light

through my veins.

I fail as a celibate.

The smell of honey

fills my throat.

I lose touch with

my bone when

it stiffens.

Sometimes

I find a place

to spring

& spike you

while you cry.

I try to rev things up

although I hate

the sound of flying.

Gagging leaves

the breath

no exit.

Then the chest puffs out,

no longer hapless,

in the face of

everything aloof

& distant,

where the world begins.

I go on craving

hostile to the ones like you

who bind me.

I surrender any

knowledge of the cave

in which I hide

from light.

"I Fail As a Celibate" By Jerome Rothenberg, from A Book of Witness: Spells and Gris-Gris, copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 by Jerome Rothenberg. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Source: A Book of Witness: Spells and Gris-Gris (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2003)

Biography

Jerome Rothenberg's publishing career began in the late 1950s as a translator of German poetry, first for Hudson Review and then for City Lights Books. Founding Hawk's Well Press in 1959, Rothenberg used it as a venue to publish collections by some of the up-and-coming poets of the era, including Diane Wakoski and Robert Kelly. He also self-published his first book of poems, White Sun Black Sun, under the Hawk's Well imprint. . . .

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