-for Olson-

this gift of envisioning words repurposed contextually,
untethered not from meaning, but used in a meaningful but
newly birthed, eye delighting manner of speaking, well, so well,
somewhere between copious laughter, adulterated glee
and tears of amazed jealousy, mock myself thinking this poet
makes me feel like English is just my second(ary) language and I sadly speak no other.

these hard words

are the only fruit my hard-rocked soiled-soul produces,
my alliterations secrete no beliefs, quench nothing,
the poems I don’t write are my most successful,
the songs that comforted, now find no-entry orifice

skin cold wet clammy sweating unsuitable for tilling,
my horizons natural, felled, underground swallowed,
replaced by the man-made barriers, guardrails of words
leaving body, utterances shoutout, exiting non-permissioned

lurch from one guilt-carrying, black leather-straps wrapped,
round my arm, to the ones strapped around my temple,
honorable acts owed, responsibilities fear foundering
unfulfilled lists, griefs, signs of cowardice, badges shameful

deep sighs, open groans, me mean asking questions of myself,
laughed off, city noises turned off, silences of colorless colden,
the sirens loudest inside reverb endlessly, still give nothing away,
a final exam, an all sided, annual checkup reveals nothing but


these hard words

7:48am 10/15/19

“I’m still in awe of words” (in life, as in poetry, timing is everything)

objects, humans, surprise and interrupt our
daily modalities, knocking us, yo! to the ground,
we, pounding it, for the word void appears,
the frustration of incapacity incarcerating,
accompanied by the loudest silenced scream,
of no poetry available, try again later!

in life, as in poetry, timing is everything

we walkabout, thinking of the scheduled eventualities, or
the dates calendar-circled, though some questioned marked,
in pencil inserted, will I be a mother, find me a husband,
a human grander grandee, fit to be with me a noble progenitor
of more than our generation, watching the sidewalk cracks for an
inkling of when, on or about such and such an alteration,
a seam undone,
a stumbling, seeing a realization as we fall, hands extending,
a notice of arrival,
all needing reconnoitering, commemorating, a poem prepared,
but none to no avail

in life, as in poetry, timing is everything

so we are in awe of words, so necessary, everybody knows,
the awe in awesome, a description for the pixels encapsulates
in I-phone photos,
the where and the why of when, I was grinning like a stupid fool,
the inability to deliver precisely when required the covering of
an appropriate description, your words, use your words, will
fail you spectacularly and so we remain awed, realizing

in life, as in poetry, timing is everything

but awesomely awesome word worlds, near and dear, held forever
in scrapbooks, the literary overlay of the treasures of everyday life,
are the still life of our longevity contextual, the celebratory,
the unexpected losses, largest to smallest, in size order,
kept fresh when you flip through those poems in dusty binders,
in oversized sewing boxes, yellowing in concert with our eyes,
graying with follicles of past pluperfect,
recalling not just the when’s, but the more important,  now, the
wherefore and whereupon, the words marking the conjunctions,
recoding the recorded synapses firing sequentially, brain to fingers, the ah so of the poetry of lifetimes

“I’m still in awe of words” (in life, as in poetry, timing is everything)

<>

Saturday
September
21st
2019