“A systematic disordering of the senses…
The sufferings are enormous, but one
Has to be strong to be a poet…”
–Rimbaud
A fierce and courageous rupturing of language,…
the reviewer on your book flap said.
fresh and dangerous possibilities,
as you map “The Everlasting No,”
the slippage of signifiers, and the collapse of meaning.
You say your words have gone transparent,
the way they work against themselves,
the way they all implode,
that there’s no “history” to speak of,
just the stories we tell ourselves, before we fall asleep.
You shake your head.
and you have no use for metaphors.
Meanwhile, the Empty Sleeve People carry around stones
that they roll in their mouths,
memories in their flapping sleeves,
of the windowless rooms where it all came out so clean.
In another room, packed and waiting for the future
words rise from the pages, shrouded like crows.
They yearn to be the footprints of vanished feet,
friends who memorized poems
that they carried under their tongues
about the pleasures of the shared and common corn,
passwords in the whisper and touch of contusion.
Then again, maybe you’re right.
A “systematic disordering of the senses.”
If they melt in your mouth or have gone transparent,
words can never join bone back to bone.
So I hope your tattoos never fade,
that the corks all come out clean,
you and your companions stay bright eyed and slender
and your desires hard as stones,
that your words slip their layered moorings and drift away
wherever your words drift away to,
that your poems stay fierce and fresh and clean.