I become a writer in this room
a pure flame in a tinderbox
a shattered limb with a sole green bud
a sonic boom in a hollow tomb
a phosphoric lotus under crushing tides
my broken hand pulls stainless wire
deadly thin and set within
a line of gastric steel and
mercuric hemoglobin and
unstable isotopic brain and
auric soul and
only and so long as
pain recompenses and
my flayed arms and shredded fingers
drop these sizzling soldering lines
upon this holy whitened pulp
I am cured
I stay together not a part
and I cannot fail
I become a writer on this ground
a beating heart in the ochre pit
a comic light on a molten lake
a cobalt blow in the homely night
a razor'd pain in tendril'd flight
a camphorous note unsettling scores
a rising tone in the dry wadi d'A
a forgiveness in the hot bruise
a curse in the cold wet sheet and
only and so long as
I read all hows and whys
backwards from the end
in my own time
and follow breadcrumbs out and home
then age will not corrupt me
and I will not fall
I become a writer in this tomb
and back away on pencil'd breath
fix up all my crackelature
mend crepuscled skin and
with every smoothing naked step
back I push back I go
my toes dig in and fight the earth
back I push back I go
away from rot and feeding noise
and the Bull of Heaven is defeated
his raw cold breath, his sightless eyes
his roughened horns are not for me
his maze is not my home
I am like no man like no other!
I write myself a womb unending
a line out of the labyrinth
I free myself from royal warrant
to early light and back across
the wine-dark dappled sea
and up the verdant hill
to begin again forever
bright muscle in the fallen temple
tumbling limbs in the fragrant grass
because oxygen defeats rust
rain defeats typhoon
lines I make score every stone and
only and so long as
I am the who in blue
the grin in green
the yell in yellow
the run in red then
I am The Crayola King of Olympus
I am Luck Everlasting
I am The Alpha Bet Boy
words grubbed with fisty splendor
the persistent stick
in the ancient hearth
and I will not die
"Barrel Hammer" – drawing from life, Greg Correll, 1987
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Comments
fingerlakeswanderer! I wrote this last night because I could not sleep. tensile strength: yep. Thank you. (also: i need a use for this fine but orphaned word: spequetering)
john: i exist to observe, say, a samovar tender, in Flaubert's sense: once and never again –– or else astonish. Thank you.
Matt: I like the grotesque and fine word, bursting. Thank you.
Sarah: Thank you.
Lea: I up-turn the urn of health and honey upon your eager plate; may you be drenched in both for the next run 'round the sun! Chchappy Chchchchannukah, landzman!
I sat next to a poet last Sat. night at a party...I told him we had a few REAL poets on OS when he complained to me everyone is a poet. You are one.