The poem I have myself inspired
over lo these dreadful decades
is too long and convoluted
to warrant retyping but does boast
a few interesting turns like when
you arrive on the scene, puff
around aromatically, then leave,
or when the motorcycle twists
too hard left, ends up spinning
on its foot-peg gyroscopically—
I mean come on, critics. Not
every human horror is a shock
novella. Some of us just crumble
inwardly until we become relevant
to the public. Publishable.
I’m no better than the next
firewood scout who came not back
to camp. I, too, am combing
these Adirondack slopes and gullies
for my sleeping form. They say
if Shakespeare styles it sleep,
it’s sleep. So if I’m sleeping in the loam
awaiting the waxing of my bloom,
paused among storm-wracked timbers,
call it suspense. Sell it wholesale
as the massive downturn everyone
was half suspecting, one eye open—
and yes, we do endure contractions
just as we await expansions if only
into starlight and æthereal frozenness
through which, they say, geomagnetic
storms sweep, sunspot-inspired.
You may read them as news items
and/or consume this as rumor—
famous tragic wreck of words.
I feel it as unpublished blessing.
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