It’s a movie of a woman
who is about to be married
and falls in love with another
man. The other man is perfect,
anyone would fall in love with
him. You would fall in love with
him. And you would fall in love
with the other man, too. He is
just so nice and so kind. Eventually
she has to choose, and so she chooses
the other man. But you wish she had
chosen the other man, but either way,
you would have wished that. It’s the
perfect recipe: it contains sweet and
sweet, bitter and bitter, sweet and bitter—
it’s balancing on a rope, high in the air.
When you leave the theatre, you lose
your balance too and fall to the ground,
and your fall is so perfectly balanced
you don’t remember going to the movies,
tonight, at all. What do you remember?
You remember a rope, and then the other rope,
and the sweet, and the bitter—
they are both so perfect that
between the two choices
love is something
you can’t seem to choose.
In THE LOVE SONGS OF MR. B.,
Mr. B stands with his feet spread wide
and his arms extended to embrace.
His body is covered with eight red kisses.
Would it make you happy if you knew
that the kisses were all from the same woman?
Have you ever discussed the fingerprint of a kiss?
How much blood do you lose when you kiss?
At what temperature does a kiss explode?
Scientists say they know nothing about the kiss,
and magicians say, that’s good, that’s good,
and then eat a ham sandwich.
Mr. B. has been kissed eight times today.
Of course today is not a term I use lightly.
Eight different women who loved to kiss, kiss
You call it madness, says Mr. B,
but I call it love, let’s put it
to song—
A beautiful album that you can store in the garage.
Yoko writes a small note that says:
“A statue was here.” I like it a little
but then I decide that it would be
much better to say “A statue is here.”
If a statue is here, that is one thing,
if it is not, then you have to start
to think about what a statue is
since it’s not here it seems.
So I prefer to remove the statue
from where I placed the note
so that the note remains honest
and so the note remains something
that makes you think about what
statues are when they aren’t
there, and you are told they are.
Maybe they are although they
aren’t. Maybe they would
like to be, and to like to be,
well, that’s enough to be—
that’s very solid stuff.
