from Dream Songs #14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights and gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its! tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

-John Berryman

Boredom, boredom, boredom.

Let the junkspace war,
(bludgeons of soft
war) on boredom rage,
though at safe distance
from potential of those private selves,
in the form of shouts
through plexiglass, always.