bonfire

[Doreen Peri]

There are more words now. Exponentially.

Words mate with themselves, proliferate
through the machine.
Words become disease,
a migratory virus.

I am ill with fever, each phrase, stanza,
line an attempt to kill the spread.
These are the final words
I will pen I say again.
These, the finale
I have spoken
and read.

It continues like plague
though I am not sage.
It is pretense to see.
Words are not a part of me.
They invade my very being.
I have become lazy.
I sleep. Words
supercede
dreaming.

I write nightmare
movies when eyes open.

Fingers tap in a weak attempt to trap
the bug and extinguish it. Is this worse?
Is this better? I will never know. It is a curse.

I am the inventor of indistinguishable peri-graphs,
letters strung together in a parade. I wade through
murk I have created. It is quicksand up to the neck.
I lay my head back. It sucks me in. I spit out garbage,
reach for beauty, hope to be pulled out by verb or image.

I grab clause.
The limb snaps.

I am back in a word trap, tapping.
I am back in a word trap, tapping.
I want to write myself out of the mire.
My entire body is enveloped.

I am the vortex, swallowed
centrifically by the force
of flush.

None of it goes down to the main line.
I am back in a word trap, tapping.
None of it goes down to the
main line.

If I could I would pull
out of disease by will,
print out word regurgitations,
burn them. Still.
Burn them.

A bonfire would be satisfying. Cleansing.
An elimination of editor or agent.
A virus can be contagious.
I wish this not on either
or one.

(2004)

[stilltrucking]

an interesting
very interesting
poem

I read somewhere that over the evolution of our kind
retro viruses have writen themselves into our DNA
and perhaps shaped our destiny
maybe one of them was the word bug

pardon the ramble
thanks for the poetry

[Artguy]

language is a virus or so said ol Bill Burroughs...

[Doreen Peri]

I thought I replied to you two. Sorry! I don't know what happened to my reply but believe me, it was clever and witty. Sighh... Maybe I was multi-tasking and forgot to push submit? geesh... I remember typing it! but I don't remember what I said darnit.

So, I'll just say thanks for reading.