Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

a poet should live in the heart of her city
at least once in her lifetime
she should watch faces go by, carrying
the weight of DA Levy crossing
the Cuyahoga with Hart Crane, arch friends
scavenging the bones of the city
we who lie
and call ourselves poets
love
to hate

she should notice the poverty and the wealth
abated and underrated in exquisite juxtaposition
she should see the old white man at Dave's pick up heavy
grocery bags and with care, place them into the old black man's
shiny white SUV, then handing him a fin, quickly palmed with
a slow "thank you", she should notice her noticing;

she should wake up each morning to the sound of seasons
changing as crisply as early spring in the Metroparks, as harsh
as brown grass in the middle of August

she should mourn with the dilapidated houses and wonder about
ghosts lingering, passing by vacant-eyed and too bruised
to live, she should mingle with the crowd,
she should not pretend.


(twas a little awkward before, methinks)

she should know the taste of all tastes
and the smell of all ....(must she?)
should she really step in all muck and sundry?
are boots allowed?
need she remove gloves while typing all forms of expression?
she puts on a raincoat and walks through Niagara Falls
she knows she must

She should attempt to rectify,
not modify the variables, stand
tall within her meter, become a
metaphor of herself, share the wealth
and honor of a visionary, stared down
by the very drowning of its own vision,
division supplementary to addition and
multiplication, become a variation of herself,
typing truths from an authentic aura,
no jokes here,
borrowing nothing but a swear
and a kiss, not a thing missing
but her eye.

There is an awful lot of estrogen in here. Where's all the boys ? Ok, coming in off the wall as a ricochet point all I gots to say is :
"but what if I want to ride the antler ?"

I'm not sure what "the antler" is as expressed by the mingo, and I'm not sure about all the estrogen, but the poem is interesting---some urban scenes translated lyrically.

I enjoyed this poem----I notice a tendency to write poems in the comments to others' poems. It isn't a bad practice. I just admire the original in prose---usually inadequate but unambiguous. Again, I enjoyed this poem.