Denise to the Rescue
Hello, this is Denise, your Poem Advocate DO NOT
HANG UP! While you may feel that this pitiful drizzle
amounts to less than overnight dew in a summer-long
drought, there is such a thing as dormancy, and sleep.
It is thought there is mineral activity unperceived by us
in rock. Things that don’t seem lively sometimes are!
Eventually you’ll come to see what your poem already
knows: that where it is weak it is wonderfully vulnerable;
close by, it’s great with feeling. Where it’s a little sloppy,
there is so much opportunity! Here’s a display of excitement,
a wagging tail, a half leap towards you sliding the papers
into full pup collapse, and a tiny dry turd rolls to the edge
of your shoe. Too sincere? It can learn to be funny in time.
But where a poem is found to be silly, it has tried too hard
to hide its shame, a serious matter. And possibly foolish.
Vacancy can only say so much. Don’t, however, go too far
the other way, and begin adopting murmurings foreign to
your mind. Give the poem time for you to catch up
to what it’s up to. Then, when you come back to find
the music’s still not right, read it out loud to yourself—
just as it is—until you can hear at last what is not there
better than you can hear that part you cannot bear to
listen to for a single moment longer. This shall become
eraser dust which later you can vacuum up.
All done, then, are we? But you do know don’t you that
your satisfaction, here, as with everything, is brief. No
sooner does one stretch out in the sunny hammock of
contentment than a rival partnership with restlessness sets in:
your shirt is bunching up, the breeze has died, here come
the gnats, you’re really not so comfy as all that.
It’s up to you, you know, to lift yourself from this contraption.
You can expect to get a call from M.U.S.E. about ten days after that.
Needs Art
Suddenly, I need to look at art.
How does this happen?
Does the desire mount up
like that little gentle puffing sound of steam in the kettle
which if not attended to will start to scream?
What, then, has put the kettle on?
And what has turned the dial?
Maybe it’s a restlessness more vague.
One wakes from a dream unremembered
and is compelled to see Something Arranged.
Or Precision of Mood represented.
Tuesday, it was a need to pass through certain hues.
Unreal shades. Or real.
But complements of something
without which we wouldn’t have it,
not a bit, or not like that.
