Why Write

Why write

Doing the work of the period "."
or toward which it portends.
What is tangible?
When our sentence is carried out
nothing is forgiven and everything
has already been said.
Every completion is full of minor,
little passings.
If the detectives of words were
to press against their own transparencies
and shapes
language would show itself to be
both blind and dumb
pitching to sunrise a belly full of shouts,
art froths in its saddle,
rides nightmares through
to an ambiguous countryside
pickled in brine, in pig's feet
where nothing is but seems and poets jump
like trout from the roof
of their fatal mistakes
only to land on a tattered page
with the tongue of an asp
biting back at mirrors and smoke
shouting fowl play. Cluck. Cluck. Cluck.
In the Capistrano of poemdom
tiny swollen swallow throats stretch
their chords.
When Jackie Robinson took the field
Everest straddled Tibet and Nepal.
It is hard for swallows to reach
for their throats
or lambs bleat from a tiger's throat.
Going down for the count. Tell me,
aren’t you ashamed?
Where do you come from?
What is your name?
Do you cuneiform?
Though my pockets are filled
with barking dogs,
it's the silence that draws me naked
through an inch high broken door
where time sings in its bowl
and the ocean I sail fills
with hearts I now name:
talisman of symbols, icon of memory,
love, passion,
poem.


Scott Malby

Posted over on A Little Poetry