The nine nine nine poems before this seem to me
like the Dead Sea Scrolls:
fragments of hardly decipherable scratchings
on nested fragments of thought.
Sometimes, I can tune in to the grainy
copies of the original synapse impulses
that formed them; they creak into motion
like images in a flip-book:
jerky stick-figures mimicking a little boy
retrieving his toad, or a sad tall son
relieving his desperation by walking
the gravel shoulder on the
long road to town.
I thumb through fat binders stuffed with printouts,
search wordcurrents archive by month, by tag,
by category, by menu list, by favorites,
by clicking on pingbacks and user searches,
and so on— each takes me to
an approximation of some plot-point
in my life, laid here for all to see,
and thousands have come.
wordcurrents is both humbling
and frustrating; my inadequacies frustrate me,
the interest humbles me.
Poetry is the left brain expressing the right brain;
it is not so accessible on the surface as
graphic art and music,
but it is an essential part
of a culture’s expression
of why we are here
and who we are
and what this is for.
That is why I do this;
it’s all you need to know.
We do it for the love
Indeed.
I would be really tickled to feature your work here as guest poet, if you were so inclined.