[New-Poetry] To poetry

[Anny Ballardini]

what a lucky guy, I tell you.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Graham 
  To: NewPoetry & Views 
  Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2007 5:17 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] To poetry


  The Nearest Simile Is Respiration


                           To poetry


  I was boozed I was doped I was maybe
  a floozy before you knew me, loose
  leafed like autumn and most of the books
  of the Old Testament that fell out
  of my father's Bible. I had a body.


  I had a habit of hauling my telescope
  into the outskirts, ransacking all
  the toothsome blackness for what: a reason
  not to do me in. Proof I was more
  than the seasonal ragbag detritus
  choking the rooftop gutters, more
  than a piece of the cosmic dust
  in some ruined philosophy.


  I could not be consoled by the universal
  Sisyphus in us all, the dung beetle
  nuzzling its putrid globe.


  I could not hitch my wagon. The stars
  and stars abrade my notions of my Self;
  tricuspid Eros chewed me raw; Jesus
  Christ rubbed mud in my eyes, and I saw
  not. I did not see.


  But with you! my sweetheart hairshirt,
  my syntactic gondolier, ruffian for hire, befoolable
  irresolute Chanticleer: with you, I back-float
  the massy and heretofore unnavigable childhood
  algal blooms, where no fish swam. No fish
  have swum that Mississippi.
  With you, I forgive my father's notes
  to NASA, the self-inflicted swastika tattoo,
  my sister's coked-up juggernaut cannonball
  into the afterlife.


  I forgive the afterlife,
  resurrect John Lennon and the jukebox
  at the Quik 'N' Hot, infect myself
  with a rare strain of tarantism. With you, I dance
  the summum bonum. With you, I am greater
  than or equal to the lack, and luck is weather
  that permits my red begonias.


   --Ashley Capps.  Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields.  University of Akron Press, 2006.







  ========================================
  David Graham
  grahamd at ripon.edu


  Home Page:
  http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html


  Poetry Library:
  http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
  ==========================================



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