Security, Complaining, and the Mail, All Mixed Together
Mail art containing “Complaining”
This is one of my “collage” poems. Phrases and words come together like the pieces of paper I use in making my art collages – they started off somewhere else and now have a second life in this composition. I like working in this way – choosing words that I see rather than pulling them up from wherever thoughts come from in my mind. The poems turn out differently, too – I have a little different way of expressing myself, I notice. More telegraphic and elliptical? Anyway, this is a poem I then sent out as mail art. It’s pasted on paper from the inside of a security envelope, which was then glued to a piece of cardboard, postcard-size. You see it here lying on a pile of other painted papers I have made. I love the patterns on the insides of these workaday items – utilitarian and nice-looking, a great thing to be.
Complaining
abrasive work
complaining
but it’s nothing-nothing But pleasure
Therefore
when I become
good and generous
every reason to think that
There’s nothing serious
about it
This is one of my favorites.
Thank you. Sometimes the words seem to fall into place.