How to read poetry (notes to self), by Dave Bonta
As if it were any other kind of communication that means what it says, not some kind of code to be deciphered.
As if it were code, where a single mistyped letter can change everything, and turn a webpage into the white screen of death.
As if you had nothing else to do: no news to skim, no email to hurry through, no other work, no purer entertainment.
As slowly as a lover performing oral sex: forget about me, what does the poem want?
As fast as a sunrise on the equator, so the mind won’t have any time to wander.
As if each line were an elaborate curse in some nearly extinct language with only four elderly speakers left, all of them converts to evangelical Christianity.
As if the stanzas were truly rooms, and not houses lined up on some quiet street.
As if the spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.
As if it were perfectly useless and irrelevant to the cycle of discipline and indulgence we think of as real life.
As if each poem were an oracle just for you: a diagnosis from a physician, an interview with Human Resources, the suggestions of a therapist, the absolution given by a priest.
As if the real poem were buried like a deer tick ass-up in the flesh of your ear.
From The Canvas Backdrop |
From The Canvas Backdrop |
From The Canvas Backdrop |
From The Canvas Backdrop |
From The Canvas Backdrop |
From The Canvas Backdrop |
Wear White Paint for the Moon We draw back, it is not easy but there is no other way. White fire spills from the cauldron of the night. A pregnant belly of illumination where spirits gather before they arrive and after they return. Moths against the lantern, our scorching hearts. Clouds skein like silver wool. Earth and stars spin falling into the vortex of whitening and darkening. The moon is a rock that flew from our oceans and seeks to return to her womb within us. Stark, startling, as I round the corner of a busy street. A spotlight in the charred sky. In the moisture of my eyes, squinting, a gleaming halo moon. A barren rock of mountains and dried seabeds up there, dragging the oceans with her, her dress of tides. A queen of debauchery, a mythos of dark permissions. Or the purity of a white goddess worshipped by the skyclad among the trees dancing in naked circles drawing her power. She is a pearl like a grain of sand in the oyster of the night that opens, a mystical lamp for the mutterings of poets and visionaries and the crazed in a world of forgotten harrowings. In the perigee moon what is untamed reigns. Wear white paint, my love, so we may dance savage across the stage lit by the moon in the night sky. Wear white paint, my love, so we may dance before the dawn draws us away. A crystal ball for seers, the beginning of time crumbles into the end. And as we sleep, faint and far apart, we guard the moon in our dreams. |