To the Poet Matthew Dickman



When you mentioned a crow
I thought of Allan Poe
Yet your words wielded
Allan Ginsberg’s queerness
Your awesome Americanness
Shuffled Allan’s wit
With your heart and gut.

You gave us a performance
But none of that heart and flowers
Romance
You were real and raw
On paper, in person
Personifying
Writing about it all.

Out of your world came out
The ardent desire to feed the pyre
Of ravenous demanding poetry
With no rhymes but sentences
A sentence which sent on death row
The rest of the worlds I heard today.

Words are wasted but yours resembled
A cherry-shed coke’s can, vintage 1975.

Lyon, November 6, 2016