In this language, no industrial revolution;

no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;

only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.

The middle class can hardly speak it.

In this language, no flush toilet; you stumble

through dark and rain with a handful of rags.

The door groans; the old smell comes

up from under the earth to meet you.

But this language believes in ghosts;

chairs rock by themselves under the lamp; horses

neigh inside an empty gully, nothing

at the bottom but moonlight and black rocks.

The woman with marble hands whispers

this language to you in your sleep; faces

come to the window and sing rhymes; old ladies

wind long hair, hum, tat, fold jam inside pancakes.

In this language, you can’t chit-chat

holding a highball in your hand, can’t

even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,

all your grief and failure come clear at last.

Old inflections move from case to case,

gender to gender, softening consonants, darkening

vowels, till they sound like the sea moving

icebergs back and forth in its mouth.”

— 

The Icelandic Language by Bill Holm

“I come from a land where poetry is like a tree which watches over man and where a poet is a guard who understands the rhythm of this world. He travels with history, and feels the rhythm of history. By heeding this rhythm, he realizes the gaps and distances that separate man from man. I see this separation between men as a darkness which science cannot dispel despite its transformative power. Only poetry can illuminate this darkness.”

— Ali Ahmad Said, aka Adonis

“Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding anyone.”

- Gertrude Stein

sum 'er

got that smother
sensation
& everything i touch
feels dirty cos it’s

all too hot. even

with bare feet i
can’t breathe. my
jeans suffocate
calves & thighs &

i am ready for my skin
to split open like
a hot vine tomato

too ripe, not picked
soon enough to keep
this heat from
tearing me open. or

me tearing me
open, just to
strip down after i’ve
stripped down to
last layers & still got
that squalid sweat sense

of fraying at all my dry
ends & ready to
catch fire.

burning bright

when the need to write
burns in your fingertips
instead of its usual tingle

& you pull up an empty window
& just go for it like you’re chasing
in a hard sprint after some wild thing
because the keys are always
too many seconds behind
your thoughts & over & over again
feeling the tail slip between your fingertips

so you collapse & catch your breath &
settle for describing the feeling
of a warm tailtip with the dirt-matted fur
in three colors & the residue that it left
on your fingers

because you wouldn't even
know what to do with that tiger
if you caught it
besides let it eat you because
you’re always letting tigers eat you,
regardless of whether or not
you’re still hanging on

you just want some sensation
a visceral mess of teeth & claws
mangling you into a red gullet

a craw for you to stick in
& describe & feel alive in &
get devoured so you can really
be one with the dirt & grass & trees
that you’re always too busy
telling to just stop
& be.