Feral packs of prepositional phrases roam
modifying the weak and the young
Adrift, verbs activate anything too slow to escape
anything
everything
verbless
Pull quotes blunder through the text
like particularly stupid elephants
quoting random scraps of drivel
it doesn't matter
A rectangular word-blob hangs feckless on the page
meaning nothing
smelling vaguely of stale knock-off erudition
The whole corpulent edifice trembles
wobbles
speaks
moistly
slurring as it were through thick drunken lips
"I read a lot but nothing really
adheres
but I learned to write this way from my peers
endless winding phrases turgid with semiotic weight
never realized
unconnected
with a period dropped in whenever I remember to do that
and then I remind myself
to capitalize
The next word."
modifying the weak and the young
Adrift, verbs activate anything too slow to escape
anything
everything
verbless
Pull quotes blunder through the text
like particularly stupid elephants
quoting random scraps of drivel
it doesn't matter
A rectangular word-blob hangs feckless on the page
meaning nothing
smelling vaguely of stale knock-off erudition
The whole corpulent edifice trembles
wobbles
speaks
moistly
slurring as it were through thick drunken lips
"I read a lot but nothing really
adheres
but I learned to write this way from my peers
endless winding phrases turgid with semiotic weight
never realized
unconnected
with a period dropped in whenever I remember to do that
and then I remind myself
to capitalize
The next word."
This poem is available as a limited edition Ultraprint
here.
Far too lucid ;-)
ReplyDeleteVery moving... Of course, in fairness *now* you're going to have to critique contemporary American poetry, in comparison to which critical writing on photography is the proverbial fish in a barrel. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteMike