An Ars Poetica (I woke to barking in Manama in the middle of the night)
no ideas but in a stranger’s
I thought it was a log until it moved
what is this Socratic puppy
echoing out of the high-rise ventilation system
bringing her her history
him his, they their, you your?
daily op-ed
fiddle duel, a knee-slapping
pronoun exchange,
flat, rolled, stuffed into me my, we our,
same narrow yellow transparency
aflame. a cruelty here to the animal.
or tossed on the walk by unknowing carriers
operating parent-loaned costly blue
moped bombs
well, it’s in the plastic bag, so you
get it (read it)
damp and bursting
with pride
edit this other
than conventional --
which is overrated
over-determined
or undergoing marriage
counseling anyway
yet mostly coagulated by
(. . . H I) J (K L . . .) --
ideological skin’s real
coherency:
more a reddish than
pedigreed
more setter
than golden
retriever by the palm
go back to
sleep now
at the end
of the your
now I
have eaten
the saltines
(you game me)
with Ashbery oysters
they were delicioso
so delicate against the back
teeth
mind
someone
else’s imploring
logos
barking
at 4 am you
realize, rising
out of your
I again
fur of sleep, an it
muzzled in forms
of thee,
the verb
to be
where the pitch
has its whiff
of Lacan-pathos
mostly gray
but slightly pink in the middle,
its certainty, its Inuit
and shaved ice
balls melting, its 5 am call
to prayer, its
unnerving stream of tongue
latent scent wafting out of the air
conditioning ethos vents and you
begin
there
noticing strands of its coat
curled and stuck there
on the sleeve of your
black suede Plato, an outfit you
had
given away to your best friend
ten years ago because she loved it
loved you, loved the world
and asked to be disseminated by you
in the form of beautiful Aristotle ashes over the Grand
not expressivist exactly but
Canyon or Ocean
and you said yes
thus could go on and on
—Chris Murray