Every new generation of poets seeks to build on that which was before and push boundaries of language, metaphor and meaning. As a lover of more “classic” poets to whom we all look for guidance and inspiration, but who struggles to say things in new and fresh ways, I’ve had a love-hate affair with the beautiful pretentions of contemporary verse. Perhaps there is just too much genius for me to capture. Perhaps I am destined to speak in an older voice with newer words? Perhaps I need greater patience to see what is ever before me? I ask here some questions in verse.

a medicine cabinet

stuffed with placebo

 

a closet full of clever

 

a basket of plastic apples

half-eaten, half-observed

spit back out where they too

become poetry

 

Hermes has a message

but his feet are raw

from too much slogging

in circles through the plumage

of the self-engrossed

 

t.s. eliot squints from

the writing chair

he’s but the worn-out scrivener

too tired to interrupt

from his tidy perch

hidden beneath our dust

and pretention

 

dickinson donne blake and hopkins sprawl

themselves out prominently

under the african violet

on some coffee table

but with coffee-stained faces

that sag bored from hearing

glorified journal entries

too minute for verse

 

was it williams’ red wheelbarrow

or mary’s kingfisher

or a d. h. lawrence butterfly

or even the silence of e. e.

that first whispered

‘folly’?

 

was it too many commas

and too little rhyme

to make something live?

did the truth live among the 

dreaming gemstones

where words give birth

to flight? 

 

or maybe those words

were bled from the same

shaky pens

leaching the heart

of day-starved paper still

straining to see?

Stand still and

come what may, they tell me.

Perhaps then I will stand still,

with feet propped against

this little flock of earthen stones

and let the wind jig in my toes.

Here I will wither happily,

like the gathering ducks,  

pooled and waiting.

I’ll whistle for the twisting

roots of soil

where hide promises of cradle and tomb. 

I will vie for the sweeter attentions of

womb-sung songs with words,

cramped, waiting, unborn.

I think I’ll wait for their release

from promises

made for two

and let spring’s last push

seduce summer’s agenda.

The coughing day-brown hillside

counsels me

to be more than I was,

but less quick to

be more than what could be.

Leave that to the rest of us, they tell me.

I think I’ll just wait here.

There was always enough time to dodge and weave among the silences where words hid themselves under innuendo  It was a metaphor for communion drank from empty cups with stale bread crumbs  Teeth never chatter in the heat of tall clear days except when one hasnt looked up yet to notice  A thirteen year olds wishbone summer is no match for the real world It chants and whirls itself into rock star memories where pretend gets truer in the telling   I guess one could say she should have known better  All the signs said the same thing with different words  So many taps on the shoulder whispers in the ear the kind you feel the need to silence with voices louder still   But once water gets poured into the brown earth the satiated ground is loathe to give it up  That is until heat and time force it back out bringing with it the green goodness of even better stories