Animals
the way
we don’t speak
and anyway
my sense of god and good morning are the same
/good morning I am across the street at the café/
notes on poem: page five:
CLEAN & JERK
CLEAN & JERK
Lift the bar
A bird can’t do that
and
he will sing not say
CLEAN & JERK
CLEAN & JERK
They
are taking apart the personalities (of all the people) I see every day (on the street)
and
I know that this is not what happens or should happen anywhere (in the world)
If I were making music now, not this poem, I’d say:
We are in service for the speaking
world of
“Clean-limbed”
and
“Human”
I won’t confess anything
but
the radiance I feel when saying
“the
colony is collapsing”
I feel guilty for it,
sure
/not to tell is better /
give me absolute give me still
make the applause sound like a flock of wings of many of the same animal
moving up in the air, a sound I cannot make
the chair is waiting
2 comments:
Wow, good work Hailey. I really like this piece. Wow.
Hailey,
This poem has a cubist feel. It opens with the deconstruction of an aspect of human existence (animal) presumed or infered by just about any world-view, continues by the (rather brilliant) direct identification of metaphysics (god) and an aspect of physics, rolls with that, etc. But rather than the cubist painter's composition from many angles upon a conventional painting subject (portrait in a chair, still-life with fruit and carafe, etc.), your composition starts with the common association of words, and thus requires less of a veil of conventions to appreciate.
The many of the same animal making a specific kind of sound (a flight of birds does indeed do this) has great poetic elegance, rather like Pound's saying stuff like "silver on silver" and creating a depth and sustained magic in poetry out of what in life would simply be indistinct (or indiscernible) material. I think this sort of thing moves us precisely because it has no analogue in life; a voice announcing "I am impossible, but you hear me."
And at the end the chair is waiting. You can't sit in a portrait.
Goofball
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