he hit hard
even when
we were just playing
*
supporting his extraterrestrial theories
with quotes from Jackie Gleason’s ex-wife
*
the pace of the stone mason, the heat
*
Romeo’s Barber Shop:
one kind of haircut
and conversation
*
giving her political opinion at pump number 8
*
out among the smokers
the fragrance of the rainy night
*
‘First self, self again; then you, Margaret’
*
I put the cans out on Monday
and take them in on Tuesday
*
cockroach hind-legging it
across the white tablecloth
*
‘World builders’
always leaving out
the best parts
*
they’d never heard the phrase: ‘indoor voices…’
*
the origin of a word
or the memory of something I know
never could’ve happened to me
*
well, it was a relief to learn that time wasn’t a consideration
in his wanting to change places with a scarlet leafhopper
*
stifling, then someone decides
to drill a hole
*
webs in the breeze
flawless spectrums
*
if I could just get a little more nothingness into my last breath
this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a tweet.
“Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.”
Quote by Sylvia Plath
Perhaps the poem itself is a bird feeding or sunning itself, perhaps a bird singing or building a nest, or rather, a symbol of a bird, perhaps the poem are signs of life, signs of powerful, soul-stirring veracity, or rather, perhaps the poem has the life of a bird and the words, are the poet’s body, the poet’s pen, a brandished sword, perhaps the poem itself, and the poet’s vision, flight.
Your poetry helps me walk, enjoying every moment, leaving the car behind.