The problem here, it’s
tough to verbalize,
but so he’s like hiding
this desperate cry
for help, the author,
in gimmicks,
alliteration,
haphazard, half-symbolic
hoo-hah, (and oh, don’t
get me
started on the oozing parentheticals,
this sort of
obnoxiously hyper-literate
and deliberate betrayal
of grammar and voice)
and why? Why does he,
the author,
do this? It’s sadness
but it’s something
more, poetry is bogus,
poetry’s the dog
you ran over backing
out your driveway
(whosefaultwhosefaultwhosefault)
and so how’re you
supposed to set
your jaw and take
ownership, you can’t
I guess, you’re stuck with
these glib, twangy
Southern political
speech metaphors.
He says, he actually
says in this poem,
I’m not even kidding,
he says for real that
“time is a pendulum,
and I feel now the force
component antiparallel
to the direction
of my movement growing
as I rise, saying
come back down and
cease, come lie
with me, with my siren
song of gravity.”
His words. It’s just a
joke, what is the guy,
a physicist? A
physicist-poet? No
such thing, poetry is
garbage, poetry
is lame, poetry is an excuse. Explain yourself!
I could go ask this guy
why he does what
he does, and he
wouldn’t have an answer, just
a dropped jaw, a masked
chasm secreting
simile and evading the
truth, the pungent
garlic on his liar’s
breath never quite
enough to keep all of these fangs at bay.
