Notes About The Poem
'I Do Not Know or Other' Contest Info
I Don't Know
I don't know if a beginning matters
or if pretending it does means anything,
or whether the rain ever started
or if the chair was ever full at all
Maybe it's all a muddle in the middle,
but maybe middles aren't a place
or maybe they are,
but I don't know
how to draw them on a map
if a map exists,
if I exist,
if the plot point was ever supposed to reveal,
or if nothing is exactly what was meant to happen.
I think I was meant to feel something
but I don't know-
profound or ordinary or quietly aching
or maybe the hum of the refrigerator
only hums when I notice,
and I don't know if I ever do.
Is it static? Is it fuzz? Is it grey?
I don't know what those words mean
or if meaning is supposed to be clear
or if I'm supposed to care
that clarity seems suspicious
or maybe clarity is just another kind of noise.
I wanted to say I lack direction,
but I don't know if that's true,
or if not knowing is its own kind of comfort,
or maybe it's unsettling,
or maybe the poem was supposed to tell me something
but I don't know what,
because the ink doesn't know either
and neither does the page
or the left turn or the right
or the waiting for a sign
that I don't recognize
and wouldn't know what to do with if I did.
I don't know what kind of sign I want
or if wanting is the word,
or if arrival ever works
or if the only sentence I can offer
is a circle of not knowing
looping around itself,
never quite beginning,
never quite ending,
never quite being certain
if any of this
means anything
or if meaning is just another thing
I don't know.
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