My poetics are the mass poetics
of phonetics, focal joints, free
associations of people with words
and words with lines. Music, like a
coopers hawk with its songbird
meat. These poetics, which I claim
to possess, are sentences in orders
that may not be re-ordered because
they are engraved in the rusty steeliness
of my brown eyes. I age according to
these poetics. General poetics
command the armies of the literary.
I do not serve armies. Special relatives
of general poetics will make friends
with any long-dead rose. Human
poetics are an incomplete song. I
am not a poet, I am a movement
in a symphony that will always
fall flatter and flatter on its
sadder and sadder face. That is what
happens to faces. They wrinkle with
disgust at the crusts that remain
of the bread they no longer bake.
I like to fall down and become
worse. There is an opposite in
the curse that utters its own
burst phrase. My poetics, these
poetics that cannot be mine,
have the heart and heartlessness
of the cobbles, the beat that
bears the repeating
as wheels batter
these unbreakable stones.
The poetics I speak of
love the passive, are impassive
in the face of faceless meaningless
meanings. These poetics
are children. They are not
so much innocent as
attentive. The designer,
the strategist,
the alchemist,
these professionals
cannot look at the face
of these poetics
without blanching,
wondering where
they'll be lead.
Roman Ryan 