Yes;
I was wanting to talk to you about the sad enterprise
of writing poetry.
How downcast one is, seeing all the parts for it
enlimpened by advertising
et all the new Malaprops. one toes English
hoping it staggers to its feet once more
as with the pugilists of old, one drunken wager from renown
one butterfly from glory
one stolen kiss in a library doorway closer
to a skald’s dearest wish
A bard gets tired, in a world eating new words
faster than it can understand the effects
of the old ones
neogollyism newspikke and an endless
scrolling déluge of porn, puppies and punditry
it only seems so bad because there’s so much of it
but indeed, it is bad, because there is so much of it
I do not need to search for topics. The particular
presents itself, most insistently sometimes
‘RESPECTFULLY, I AM BEAUTIFUL.”
disrespectfully, I have the attention span of a house fly
and a variable crock of enthusiasms and illnesses
I LOOKED AT YOU AND YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL
But I ain’t writin’ a poem about that.
I am scraping blueberry pie filling from the counter
and that’s quite enough
i do prefer love over sinks
and the enthralment of learning and insight and connection
over the technic that gets us all here
whoosh
in the company of our peers
being the being that watches our species crash into an asteroid
I am saying this way is an old way, and it works for me
those beings who relent and strike the rock that is my forehead
then hoot with laughter as i bleed and swear
they are old beings and they do not have names
they don’t care about pretty moments
sing for your people, they yell, they babble and yell
trying to make themselves heard above my tinnitus
another field of verse – this body will lose this form
i remember holding you and thinking that these bones
inside these bones will be gone some day
you didn’t feel like a skeleton
no poem could contain my situation
and I was forced by my own breath into song
Other pens hover over those long bouts
of helpless, isolated weeping. it’s grim
and effortful and being uncomforted
is the whole point of it
I write poems about death because my friend died
there’s nothing complicated about that
it would be uncanny if I didn’t
poems are not edifices
they are tattoos
I’ve left a space here (pats chest)
for you, for when the word comes back
No.