Bill Knott

Ribbety

A standard poodle seems to be driving the Yaris in front of me.

I thought American Sentences would lead to real poems, but no.

Saw a guy walking down State Street in Hurricane dressed like a chicken.

Wrong-way crash. I drag my lifeboat to the scene. There are no survivors.

My lifeboat believes
in water, what it can do,
not what it doesn’t.

I brought my lifeboat to the wrong ocean. The water spat it at me.

I’m stuck. The ship is sinking. I brought a lifeboat, but it’s the wrong one.

I turn the lights on in my house clockwise so time doesn’t go backwards.

My mind is a wild turkey scaling a basalt ridge without its flock.

To avoid writing poems, I’m rejuvenating my throw pillows.

I washed all my walls today because who can write poems with dirty walls?

Me: I only get seventeen syllables? Screw that. I’m outta here.

Jon turned on the heat, so now I have to sing Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On.”

Dreams:

Walked down a long peer and saw you’d turned into a drug lord. I said hi.

I decided to marry you because I liked your dogs. They were small.

I dreamed the best American Sentence but forgot it when I woke.

It went, like, something something something something something something something.

It’s strange how little I have to say when I have finite syllables.

Feces-covered toilet plunger left in hotel hallway. Good morning.

Tomorrow, we see the doctor but today we bird at Utah Lake.

I was with people in my dreams last night and cannot remember them.

Something good, a party maybe, or something bad. I can’t remember.

Whatever it was I left it, then went back to it. The dream, I mean.

I like my body right now, enough, the functionality of it.

When we get back home, I’ll write real poems, not just these bullshit sentences.

Back is filler in that last sentence, which is why it’s total bullshit.

American Sentences can make me say things weird or not at all.

I’ll get some good ones out of this. I just know it. Me of big, fat faith.

Not everything fits into poems. Not everything fits in the world.

I sort of like that last American Sentence, but I don’t trust it.

I guess that’s the deal. Do I trust myself in language and in the world?

Good morning, we scare each other, on the other side of fear is love.

Butter, my rubber chicken, got a plastic cat dressed as a chicken.

Butter is also plastic, not rubber, but I haven’t told her yet.

So many tall, beautiful people here you could put them all on cakes.

My sleep score last night was dude what do you even think you were doing.

I forgot to pack shoes: I came in slippers and must live in slippers.

Gotta hit the road for a medical vacay these days in Utah.

File under Make American Healthcare Inaccessible Again.

At least we’ve put some miles between us and the Utah measles outbreak.

And I got this rubber chicken who loves me more than politicians.

I found my boots: Now, I have my boots, slippers, and a rubber chicken.

I named the rubber chicken Butter and held her as I slept. She squeaks.

Butter is filling me with microplastics, I’m sure, but also love.

Olivia Newton-John’s “Magic” wakes me from sleep in the hotel.

How the song found me in Provo, I’ll never know: some kind of magic.

Make America Sacred Again spray-painted on a pink trailer.

In Provo, Utah, with nothing but slippers and a rubber chicken.

Telling someone you feel emotionally unsafe around them because of their language and behavior isn’t a dangerous thing to say in general or to a white man in this day and age. If someone tells you that’s the case, they aren’t listening to you. They aren’t hearing you. They are reacting in a way that’s most likely in keeping with the things that made you feel emotionally unsafe around them in the first place.

I’ve been spelling tripartite tripartate and pronouncing it tripartate for more than thirty years is how I am.

I can do whatever I want in a poem, more so than in the world.

I have outgrown my underwear is how I am.

I’m looking at Bill Knott’s poetry archive and thinking what’s the point we’re all going to die is how I am.

When we fail to recognize sanism and ableism in all its forms, we fail to protect ourselves and each other.

I can’t keep attempting to raise consciousness in my local community, online, and in poetry circles to the point of having medical episodes and mental-health destabilization so others can keep catching up and catching up and catching up … but never actually do. I’m tired. Literally sick and tired.

Give us ribbety or give us death. — Sign at No Kings Protest

Ren Wilding is an astounding poet. Reading their work makes me feel like someone’s cracked my chest open and inserted a better heart.

Him: If someone does something wrong in poetry, you need to name them publicly to warn others.

Also Him: I’m afraid you’re going to say something about me that hurts my writing career.

Me: I’m going to have a nice day.

My Intestines: Not so fast.

A group of frogs can be called an army, a chorus, or a colony. I call a group of frogs a democracy.

I used to want to be the cylindrical container that shot through the pneumatic tube at the bank. I also wanted to be the money inside the container. Anything to not be human.

I made a bunch of big decisions, I’m in the bed, and the life partner is bringing me no-bake cookies, ice cream, and caramel corn is how I am. My therapist said this is OK. I’m not so sure.

I stole the last Zevia in the house from the life partner is how I am.

I’d rather be too soft for this world than too hard.

I’m eating caramel corn while lying in bed with my dog on me is how I am.

We can be born after we’re born, and it doesn’t need to happen in a religious framework.

The Harvest Moon Supermoon and the Waning Gibbous Moon are stealing my dreams. I need those dreams. They’re for me, not for various and sundry moons.

Half of what you’ve done has already been done before and by half I mean all.

The life partner has informed me that he’s no longer angry with me. We just woke up. We haven’t even interacted today.

Your work matters, what you do in the world matters, and you matter. Thank you all for what you create, what you share, and for your kindness.  

The white-crowned sparrows have arrived for the winter, which means joy has taken up residence in this desert.

I just thought about baby animals, and I’m suddenly very happy.

When I see nothing but darkness, teach me to see the dark. When I hear nothing but darkness, teach me to hear the dark. When I feel nothing but darkness, teach me to feel the dark. When I realize I am darkness, teach me to love the dark that I am. The darkness of my body. The darkness of my mind. The darkness I came from and will return to. The darkness that is all that is.

I would really love to be in a room where I feel wanted, welcome, like I don’t have to hide essential parts of myself, where I don’t have to listen to things that are painful and othering, and where I can speak in full voice without shame and trepidation.

Poets who see folks with psychotic disorders as terrible people can fuck all the way off. Poets who stand up and teach that kind of shit can fuck off even more.

When you think you’re the destination, but you’re just the obstacle.

I love a good fight on cuneiform tablets.

The only thing worse than having wet hair is having wet hair in a new place.

Your cracks are how the universe enters you.

I just googled what is a sand time thing called is how I am.

Kafka-Kunitz

For two decades, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically. Some poets and writers have their own dedicated pages.

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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? … we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. — Franz Kafka

It turns out that the word happiness is just not a useful word anymore because we apply it to too many different things. — Daniel Kahneman

Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you’re thinking about it. — Daniel Kahneman

We do not attend to the same things when we think about life and we actually live. — Daniel Kahneman

We have very little idea of how little we know. We’re not designed to know how little we know. — Daniel Kahneman

Whatever work you’re trying to do now to benefit the world, sink into that. Get a full taste of that. — His Holiness the Karmapa

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we / protested / but not enough, we opposed them but not / enough. — Ilya Kaminsky

Know this: / yours is the name that slid first to my lips / when the light became enormous / and the anxious voices flared / like starlings — Gina Keicher

Gary Snyder / is a haiku / far away — Jack Kerouac

It is just simple attention that allows us to truly listen to the sound of the bird, to see deeply the glory of the autumn leaf, to touch the heart of another and be touched. — Jack Kornfield

The closer you get to real matter, rock, air, firewood, boy, the more spiritual the world is. — Jack Kerouac

The windmills of / Oklahoma look / In every direction — Jack Keroac

As life goes on, time isn’t the largest thing to think of, / it’s the smallest. — Suji Kwock Kim

Into the dirty waters of our dead / the ash that was flesh becomes / precious. Hard light drags its claw / through the brine. — Sally Rosen Kindred

If our methods are simply divisive and further traumatizing—without actualizing the justice that we so desperately want to work for—then what are we prioritizing in our quest? Who is being cared for and who has been held accountable? — Amy King

So the hens and geese make us think in terms of help / outside, how they flap and move with fat ease in front of trains, / across the chopping block, to the hungry winters of final leviathans, / even as they land just so on the wires above us ― Amy King

Beyond this is a precise amnesia / a membrane of forgetfulness / I keep my promises / I do not tell this story / Not even to myself — Janice King

and for her, / whose face / I held in my hands / a few hours, whom I gave back / only to keep holding the space where she was — Galway Kinnell

You live / under the Sign / of the Bear, who flounders through chaos / in his starry blubber: / poor fool, / poor forked branch / of applewood, you will feel all your bones / break / over the holy waters you will never drink — Galway Kinnell

And the breeze wound through my mouth and empty sockets / so my lungs would sigh and my dead tongue mutter. — Carolyn Kizer

My knees were hung with tin triangular medals / to cure all forms of hysterical disease. — Carolyn Kizer

O what a bright day it was! / This empty body danced on the river bank. — Carolyn Kizer

When he found my torso, he called it his canoe, / and, using my arms as paddles, / he rowed me up and down the scummy river. — Carolyn Kizer

Half the world wants to be like Thoreau worrying about the noise of traffic on the way up to Boston; the other half use up their lives being part of that noise. I like the second half. — Franz Kline

I am a pond but / when a frog gets intimate / I keep my mouth shut. — Bill Knott

Tate is a poet; Hass (or at least in this instance) is a conveyor-belt. — Bill Knott

The mud we go through / In the mornings / To say we are here, / On the literal edge / Where we don’t know / The draft and heat / Of summertime again. — Noelle Kocot

Everything could be taken from me, except my ability to create. — Jesse Krimes

If I dreamt I set a field on fire, was it a field of plastic? / This green smoke settles on the skin and burns like ice, like stone. — Andrew Kozma

I stumbled along my own blockades / believing friends would come / with food in baskets thinking / there were barriers against blackness — Lisa C. Krueger

The poem on the page is only a shadow of the poem in the mind. And the poem in the mind is only a shadow of the poetry and the mystery of the things in this world. — Stanley Kunitz

Grandfather was giddy / With parturition and slick / “God help me,” I thought / “Letting fast river talk me / Into metempsychosis” / Water flowed one way / The dead the other. — Stephen Kuusisto

It may seem surprising that the world of poetry should be as infected with ableism as it is. Poetry is by its nature an enemy of the normalizing. Its innate antagonism to the normative in favor of the individualizing truths of human experience should make it open its arms wide to the complex sensoria and angle of vision of disability life. And yet it doesn’t. — Stephen Kuusisto