The Poetic Impulse

Oblique and so direct

that it erects
the phallus
in the pen
and in the poem's flesh –

so fresh

that it cannot remember
what it is supposed to think –
it cannot stop itself –
it clocks itself,

then sinks

into a rampant timelessness
through whose one tiny
aperture a picture blooms
into the mind –

a precious

find – what is the word
for it? inflated floating
beach toy, tire
round the middle,

under which

an ancient
impressionistic memory
as vivid as it is abstract
extracts six

orange-colored fish

against an azure blue –
and somehow you entirely
are in it and are absent
from it all at once.

You are a dunce

who can’t explain
a single thing.
And yet you
sing.






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