Spare Words: Slide Show

Your cajoling angles have tamed

my rolling demons, left them, uhm,

it may be a momentary thing.

What do you know? Same as me,

not much. But based on what?

the present combination of smile, hope and fear?

we’ll build a carnival tent, populate

it with bumper cars, and maybe we

will have enough juice to collide.

Don’t think I don’t know a cheap trick

when I use it. Poetry as tool.

Shame, that, but still, if words are

but a vehicle, I’ll let you drive.

In fact, let’s stretch the metaphor

and call ends and means the pedals

that make the vehicle go:

word as means is go

word as ends is brake,

and everything else is gear-shifting

without a clutch >> just grinding.

So we learn new intersections,

Where you bend, fold, mutilate -
insert tab a into slot be -
this is where I hold this longing –

this but that's not the right word.
Longing cheats the bend of you,
at your break, this is the first name:
and this the second: and have the third -

new routes to take, and plan our paths

around new sentences (analogy = roads),

around new letters (analogy = signposts),

around new glyphs (analogy = the strokes

around your center it will take me to find

the middle. No lollipop, you, but I will lick

until I can’t, if that’s okay? if I have to go

until I swallow you whole?)

The metaphor fell apart on me, and I had to shift

(hint: wink, wink) to a more apropos simile.

I’ve got them all confused: similes, metaphors or

analogy.

Voice of anxious, patient waiting.

Voice of hope that our carnival

doesn’t go the path of the midway,

with the Disappearing Lady meeting the

Innuendoed Man, where all entendres

are meaningless.

Spare Words