Stringing nonsensical,
insensate, indefensible,
reprehensible, rhetoric.
Recited for the heck of it.
You bet I'll make a mess of it.
Wrecking right rhymes
with wrong timing,
and less-than-prime priming.
Killing kennings, and closing the door
on metaphor.
Makes you wonder what I'm writing for.
If the sublime kinda thought pops into my noggin,
why water words down with some kinda dream-scheme doctrine?
Just let the rabble rumble, bumble, scrabble, and fumble.
Forgetting factual focus, or a heart that stays humble.
It doesn't really matter if the meaning's all mumbled.
As long as what I'm slinging
keeps some hipster heads ringing.
And remember, I dig the dictionary too.
But multiplying words
doesn't equal
adding meaning
to anything we do.
Language is an ingredient
in a magnificent soup.
It is not the soup itself.
Don't satisfy yourself with garlic only, that burning smack
is nothing compared with its capacity
to wend and become something brand new.
So get to the kitchen! Stop holding single ingredients in
your hand! You are not as foolish and unsure as you seem!
Inside the steaming, many things appear that are not
here now, in your thin, tired question.
If language is a dead space ship between us
if its a sleeping chicken
instead of a casserole,
if it's cold tea,
a fake hug,
if it gets lost in the corners of the ceilings
and never reaches her heart
if it can't ever remove the training wheels
if it only knows dog days
if it will always be a contender
than we must start fires in the stars, with whatever we can
and stop pretending we give a shit about accuracy
or communication or being understood
I don't want you to understand me! Who gives figs for stuff like that any more?
I want you to set stars on fire in my name.
I want you to carve the lines of my body into the bowline of a pirate ship
I want you to not be able to leave the room
tear the bread in half,
don't return the library books
don't ask what I think
and don't stop asking
me to dance anyway. Even if it's an old
fashioned dilly. Even if I didn't
wear your mother's
dress, or ever can anything, even the
beautiful tomatoes that covered the red
clay. Ask me.
No matter what I say.
I built this desk higher than was reasonable.
Apparently, I wanted the pleasure of my own excitement
more than a comfortable writing life.
The legs rise, Dr. Seuss spindling, a long
way toward ceiling, and I bungee corded an aviator
seat onto a tall stool at a breathtaking angle so that
I have to be very careful sidling my butt up and finally,
oh, er, off, on! This batting about of language, at great
heights is not for the faint of heart. It’s much
warmer up here, and I’m too high
to get down. So I stay a course through powerful urges
for Chips with Dip or One More Fucking Load of Laundry
and occasionally, in my bored
willingness, I stumble
upon some shimmering confluence
of words that makes me want to rip out
my hair and buy a new howl, or spend
my life trying to become
a white sheet, hanging alone all day
with the sun and the wind and then the stillness of night
and the dew, leaping from blades
of grass to sway a ways with me in this
soft shiver of not yet morning.
A poem is a needle on the energy meridian:
if you hit it at all, you hit the whole damn thing.
for Mary Ellen
(two friends dance of lovers)
the question is, then, do we want
(what do we want) and want more
than not want
what want is worth wanting
to smell of each's skin? To be
the grass beneath
these quaking hands?
Response two:
Not everything is a cartwheel
that lands you on
sex grass on
fire in big wind, but some
things sure as shit are. And if you don't love
you best stay clear of collaborative art all together
cuz if
art renders you see through
and makes you
sun shot and seen
than shared art is heart-porn
a jeweled fist closing fast
the thigh mile between knee and hem
and as it disappears
another epiphany thunders o'er
the not yet done shuddering
tundra of the unforgiven poet.
Response three:
the thing chased is merged,mythical
with the body of a woman alive
and the head of a woman
dying from so much understood pleasure
