Where will all these poems
go? What will all these
poems do? How will all
this poetry change me?
How will language improve
the world? Why should a
person write poems? What
aesthetic or ethical reason
could drive this unreasonable
task? When is the task
complete? What is the
meaning of poetry? If
poems are questions,
can they provoke? If
poems fear reactions,
can they be integrated
like a cloud bank into
a debit account? That's
a gray whale of a song,
a quest without a wrong,
a suggestion to the politics
of our time, please leave
me alone, please pull me
in, please destroy the things
I dislike, please make my pleas
quiet enough for me to sleep.
A poem, any poem, could do
any of the below. The below
bellows with blankness. A
blank will set fire to wild
sentences, creating and
destroying with a shingle
of a oxygenated breath,
tearing apart the constituent
contextual rooftops, proving
too many philologies correct
for a philosopher to apply
logic and count the fountains,
measured proofs as
impossible as a poem
that does what it intends.
Roman Ryan 