Do What Now
for ET
We are things embarrassing, strange, and hang around
feeling everything things, things, considering beautiful
that which does not consider anything. Are we? Strange
and hang embarrassing, things around, beautiful
feelings. Consider everything. That which considers
we are. Feeling feeling, not beautiful. Hanging things.
Everything we are, strange, which does not feel. Strange,
that which hangs around feeling. Consider beautiful
embarrassing anything. Which thing? That thing thing.
We hang around embarrassing our strange everything.
Consider feeling. Are we? Beautiful everything, we that
does and does not. Hang strange, things, things feel.
We are. Everything feels that strange which feels.
Everything that strange which feels. That strange
everything. Which feels. That strange beautiful
anything which feels strange and embarrassing.
Are we? That hanging strange and everything which
feels considers that we feel, things, hangs, things
and feeling everything we are. Oh and not who.
Copyright © 2014 by Mike Young. Used with permission of the author.
“I wrote ‘Do What Now’ for the poet Emily Toder because she donated to my magazine NOÖ Journal, and she said it was just the right degree of Gertrude Stein for her. ET’s own poems are often startlingly pure, like the geometry in Devo videos, so in this poem I tried to distill two of my favorite words—feeling and thing—into their purest struggles. The word ‘thing’ was originally just a Viking assembly, then it expanded. ‘Feeling,’ meanwhile, might come from a failed imitation of how touching sounds.”
—Mike Young