May 31, 2007

Poetics of a Non-Poet

          Words like
          I love you

          Between this page and the somewhere
          part of whatever
          biological whatever
          excretes hauntings spiritual
               a miscarriage arrives turning
               worlds schizoid
               into mutated
                    mutilated
                    cringing lines of ink
               which exist apart
               sad
               in their failure.

A poet is one
mute
unable to repeat the chorus of
     dissonance
     and
     harmony
he hears
     with
ears
     more
susceptable proportionate to their longing.

A poet is one
in egocentricity who would speak of things he cannot
(understand?)
explain
by drawing pictures
with babbling-
brooks
     clothes-
pins
and numerous by
products of existence un-
profound.

A poet is one
claiming poets should have: ability
to disembowel the neural system of feeling,
to explain by the melody of sound
things
which dictate over
my understanding
even.

          Units ago as I reckon time
          I ceased to bow spritually
          determined that if I could not understand
          god
          i did not know him and
          would not talk about what
          I did not know, and
          there is a rank of strength
               this living
                    existing
                    speaking
               only where you
                              know.

          But I am not a strong
          man.
          I would speak
          ---of love---
          Shout!
          of things to me
          (god only knows)
          more obscure than he.

A poet is one
who would say all that I have said to say that
which is unspoken;

A poet is one saving
revelation
till the end,

then ends where he began.
          Things like
          I love you.

 

—Jim Lyle

Posted by dwaber at May 31, 2007 12:42 PM