Words

"I hope you hear me,
'Cause it's not profound.
I just want you around." -Lauryn Hill

Adrian Blevins read "Longing" and thought it was about the moon, which is interesting and brilliant. What real poetry does is that it puts you in an emotional challenge and means different things to different people.

I found one of the poems from several months ago that I had lost, and how brilliant it once seemed, it no longer does. It was so connected to the situation that it couldn't see the situation objectively -- one can argue that poetry doesn't have to be objective -- but when does it translate from a form that only heals oneself to an art form?

I love cliches.
My heart is hurt.
It is pounding out of my chest.
I'm moving mountains
So we can be friends and nothing more.
Gazing at my sweet words
like they're wrong.
I want to burst but can't.
Tears drawn; eyes red.

Then I say. 'Cuddle the water like one's flesh.'
I love the word 'flesh';
this is not a poem. But to go to that place
at this school to write one
that's unique, cliched in its own way,
because the people and thing I write about are lovely in their/its uniquely cliched presence,
it provides such a sense of ease.

Not, my words can release my soul, but, my words can cry my soul,
question- stroke - hurt my soul--
then cry it some more.

Especially when one has no reason to be hurt
but for the art of being hurt.
There's whats inevitable;
then there's a spirit that holds steadfast the 'evitable' but
they're the same and the spirit is at tension.

Then there's the children that cuddle you in the night.
Then there's the work the glaze over 'the freight'-
that was bad. But neither penetrates to the source of the 'it'
that has
stationed 'itself' on the back of one's mind without definition---
just enthrallment.

- I don't expect
any of this to make
any sense to
any one besides me.
I have that thing about me --
I'm very open with words --
but not the lines between words ---
and the 90 percent of communication that words can't
capture.

The un-edited version of 'Song' for Blevin's Class is below.
-------
Song

The music is pulverizing.
Hips dip in synchrony
Enraptured by Afro-Asian melodies
Ascending to
the
moziac of
Pounding
Unzipping
Slapping
far beyond the nostalgia

That the room can hold.

When the music meanders then skitters then writhes
Until nothing remains but kaleidoscope

When the hips once chanting lie atrophed
The morning is in shambles.