THE CHEST HAIRS OF LANGUAGE, DEAR READER
My writing is a needle shortening the pants of monotony and dread
It leaves an impressive thread as it winds through
the abbreviated cuffs of you who hitherto did proceed trippingly through the daily
darkness and stumble of everyday speech
My writing rides a bicycle through the stitchholes of your hems
the fabric of your mind stretched by my thousand-speed cosmic roadbike cosmos with
wheels of pure joy
and your thoughts
undiscovered planets embraced by a multitude of imperceptible moons
suddenly are Hubble-ized and named by the perspicacious cartographic lexicon of my
cerebral sewing
For I am a one-handed phrenologist kneeling in a haberdasher’s fantasyworld funhouse,
a contestant playing the carbon dating game with the moon-fearing bachelorettes of my
ancestors
Through the chest hairs of language, my poems seek gold medallions and the burnished
signs of the zodiac in the mythic resonance of the curly pectoral forest
my writing is a BeeGee sestina hallelujah chorus
a John Travolta post-structuralist jumpsuit fandango of literary theory
a Hilary Duff post-colonial mega-sized writing samba in the blog roll drive-thru
My poetry contains multitudes and they appear small within its vastness
a single molecule within the molehill of my talent
I write on a desert island and the desert island feels glad
signals the boats of meaning, the search-and-rescue helicopter critics
says, stay away
stay away for we have something here
Yes, I’m a bachelor married to the archipelago of my own poetry
going on a date with me would be like Y2K all over again
an excitement of digits, an anticipation of irrational calculations, airliners seeking the
arcing chaos of their own inspirational routes through the cloud-busy air
a date with me would be like changing from the Gregorian to the Julian Calendar while
hang-gliding through the National Library dressed in an asbestos nightie while the
books are inflamed
the
librarians run blindly down the stacks and inhale the smoking grammar of our
lives
headbutting the opposing players
of tedium, madness, and apathy as they attempt to fan
the bookish flames with facile rhymes, trite metaphors, and a limited
understanding of the depth of my literary consciousness
I am the book-wheezy Jeffersons of this last century, the poetic Archie Bunker of our times
I speak of Love Connection glory
of radiant Gilligan’s Island subplots singing Partridge Family small press bliss in the
triumphant World Cup publishing paradise of Toronto
A date with me would be like having God’s credit card, Satan’s expense account, and the
incisive ontological wardrobe of Samuel Beckett if he were born as one of the
midget stagecrew for Gladys Knight and the Pips and his daddy owned the big
rhinestone factory on the outskirts of sense.
Look! Someone’s revved the motor, turned on the highbeams of language’s monster
truck
Seems like its blind driver has floored it and is driving to you a first date
it’s 1849 and it’s with me
—Gary Barwin