Sound Reason

Poetry cannot

Preach and Listen 

simultaneously make or destroy

sense nor sense-ability.

Rock music and video games 

are responsible for all evils

not to mention

Others who don't do things

like we do.

Literature no longer poses a threat.

People don't read. 

People can spell but are inept

grammaticians. 

A poem can 

fair enough

hear and here itself becomes an echo,

like music, to sing along, to say,

open to all, an invitation

to taste.

The poet breaks line 

and all paper currency

down

so the pocket sings

wildly.

Relax, nobody is listening.




Due to the limitations of early cameras, this is the only known image of American orator Robert G. Ingersoll before an audience. Taken May, 1894 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A good poem is vertigo

(A good poem is vertigo)

                -As if I know. No-

not by my own leaky pen,

though

                 there are a soaring few

alphabetical alchemists

that throw in

words that are known to explode next 

                                     to each other;

elsewhere

you find fissions and contraries may agree

lilting toward lyricality and

honing in on homonymic epidemics.

True, virtues are silent. 

You cannot walk these off.

And even then, some braver explorers 

                  pillage the nether regions-

savages and murky poetry readers

mineralized and ossified, fumbling and 

                  kneading to make meaning of it all

softer.

Those insatiable prose readers, of us

cannibal wordsmiths savorers 

of acids and sugar

                                 find balance

together.

Neutralized, sodium syllables 

grounded us, home again.

The top spun itself 
                   out and ungathered threads

that make any thing, 
                           more

True-

when the poem finds its own end.

                 


Painting by Elihu Vedder [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Collecting words from the bone pile

The Three Oddest Words

By Wislawa Szymborska

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh,

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996

__________________________________________________________________________________

 Italo Calvino on Quickness-

"Words, words that make me think. Because I am not devoted to aimless wandering, I'd rather say that I prefer to entrust myself to the straight line, in the hope that the line will continue into infinity, making me unreachable. I prefer to calculate at length the trajectory of my flight, expecting that I will be able to launch myself like an arrow and disappear over the horizon. Or else, if too many obstacles bar my way, to calculate the series of rectilinear segments that will lead me out of the labyrinth as quickly as possible."

From Six Memos for the Next Six Memos for the next Millennium

 

Imagine words being 

disembodied

from their inky chambers

in confinement

of a stroke on whim

Words set free from

the constriction

of definition

trapped 

by convictions

Language as folk lore

posing as apparitions

opaque and outside

ourselves

a resemblance

While we wrestle with gravity

Here

Words are grappling with reality

Now

Set against 

the woven fabric canvas

of our chance encounters

in perpetuity

strokes on a whim

I get the impression

of vibrant color on a white day

either way

A container to store ecstasy

dripping down

and running

to meaning 

we para phrase

artfully appraise

Concentrate as you read

these words you may need

inside your head

with your minds i

while standing beside

ourselves

in

nirvana

projecting 

maniacal mana

Leaning on clouds

we rely

on coming to a compromise

in order to see 

shapes as symbols, like these

metaphors

thirsty for more

than thin air

An impression

a sense 

of being

with words

we try to share

interchangeable

synonyms

thereby

invoking and provoking

a sense of continuity

An encyclopedic

orthopedic

selfsame essence

Words are the

people pith

that make-up

our masterful myth.

Image by Gerard de Lairesse, 1690 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.