There's just nothing
like a kiss. When four
lips coalesce, there's
so much more than
the parts or even the
sum of the parts. The arts
come close to the art
of open and close, open
and close, because just
being steady isn't what
the arts are about. Like
the arts, lovers also flout
the static state, disavow
neat oppositions like
sweet and tart, opting for
a dynamic equilibrium,
trying to prolong it so long
as their mouths hold out.
The first love is the one
you never forget, they say,
or at least the one you
regret the most anyway,
but not in an opportunity
cost kind of way, more like
opportunity lost. That kind of
love never congeals, is never
susceptible to frost. And though
the years roll along the road,
your ever recursive mind goes
panning back through the past,
revealing the precious ore,
trashing the dross that accrued.
Some are and
some are not
good at telling
spiely things.
You have to get
a certain feel
from the crowd
if you're going to
engage in a bit
of spiel. Repartee
and a repertoire
are both a must if
you're not to feel
like a heel and lose
the crowd's trust.
Too much booze
and you might
just as well leave -
unless you've
got a glockenspiel
up your sleeve.
A flake of memory slowly falls
end over end, side to side, but
certainly is no mistake, merely
finely jagged edges without
proximity to any other flake,
to any base or central kiosk stall
where impressions are stored.
Detachment from the hoard spells
the certain end for our lone
ragged fragment with whatever
imprint will be its only seal forever.
The more we know the less
we understand - as if that
were equal to sage advice
like a bird in the hand.
But facts are facts and that's
just a stack of inventory,
the result of an over-eager
ingestion. But we need some
mental bile and certain other
juices of digestion before
insight can be sent flashing
down the brain's oily sluices
into the gaping vat of mastery.
The gray light grows
lighter as morning
comes closer, and the
dawn swells greater
and greater as the first
forms become clear.
Poetry is
a many-feathered thing,
and the frame
of poetry is hung
on a language - bones of
grammar, sinews of
semantics, out of which
grows shimmering plumage,
each word a feather,
abundant shades of color,
depending on how
the sunlight hits it;
and then the shudder when
it wings and sings.
