I don't need to say their names
I'll let the rhythym tell.
Then we have the sort,
who hang out of their windows,
who sweep through the room in long trailing skirts,
who rub their backs against their stanzas.
Last we have the sort who enjoy
enjambing,
Whose words tie knots around
knots,
Until it is a ball of string rolling down and endless stairway.
seeks poet
for unfolding
all the infinite space
inside a single molecule.
Must:
stare out windows,
doodle in the margins,
laugh inappropriately.
Some experience required in
beachcombing,
foreign languages,
lost loves.
Pay varies.
Includes incomprehensible
intangible benefits package
and unpaid time off.
The thunder in the south
is like the metal roof of the sky
dragging on the cement,
I am tying it back on
with bailing wire,
cutting it with a knife.
The air tastes raw with
electricity, fingers burning,
the misplaced smell of grass,
a picture of your voice
stamped behind my eyelids.
Tennyson would say,
"Yes my wild little poet."
But he was talking
about a bird, not us.
There is no way that Tennyson
was not talking about us,
the minor prophets
who whisper so loudly
into our pens and keyboards
that the earth shudders,
and all the original words
have had their newness
shaken off
leaving only the clinging leaves
of cliché.
Leaving you to tie
the roof of the world back on.
But that's okay because
you've always been burning
as bright and hot as the water,
smashing atoms with a snap
of your fingers,
and you know tomorrow
you'll wake up to the sound of birds
singing their canned love songs,
songs you never heard before,
yet wonder where you heard them.
Even as the sky groans for you,
I am tying it back together
but my knots are unskilled,
my knife is cheap,
and I cannot say a word.