Communicate

I
Alone
With living
Live
Across a sea of human blood and breath
That flesh of flesh and bone of bone
Can not cross apart from moments scattered
In rare desire to forgive forget atone
Forgotten times in Eden once before the storm
Dust speak to rib through serpent’s eyes
Our human thoughts not given spoken form

II
it’s 2002 November 25th
I’m sitting on stage at the Woods-Brown ampitheatre
notebook in hand
Wishfire in my ears
stars out full moon
so cold I can see my breath
I don’t mind

I do all of my best writing
walking home from the bus and in the shower
I spent two hours under the water
in my clothes the night before
afraid of the anniversary of falling
it’s not a river but it’s still never the same

I listen to Rogue
his soul is binary a guardian
I’ve decided mine is too

thinking about Yeats and Shakespeare
why don’t they perform Shakespeare here
even just a few friends reading from the text at night
in high school we did that
read Shakespeare straight from the text
only Susan Liu and I had any feeling
she kissed me on the cheek once
and I’ve rarely been that happy
who said poetry never made us feel

III

What is poetry which does not save / Nations or people?
--“Dedication,” Czeslaw Milosz

And poetry is the purest form of love,
All devices lost among the words and
Errant phrases
Scrawled fast across the page.
That’s all.
Poetry makes no claims –
Merely poets,
Searching for words that never come
And using
Poetry to fill the spaces.

***

This is the final assignment for my Experience of Poetry class. Three sections, ten lines minimum, first two are in the style/voice/structure/etc of poets of your choosing, the last section being in your own voice. For the first section I chose Dylan Thomas, and I decided on Nazim Hikmet for the second.

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