


To Write Poetry:

Capture a thought,
bind it and box it,
so that it can almost be seen
pacing through the cage 
like the extinct
zebra-striped dog-thing 
called Thylacine or Tasmanian Wolf
in rotting black
and gray films. 

Then dehumanize it, 
make it trite and 
cliché, force it to become 
less, more like
human suffering is a cancer 
on the Jungian soul,
loyalty is so sorrowful, 
sorrow is so loyal, 
the metaphorical 
               walls that sepa- 
rate  
    us. 

Or take a sight, 
parse it and splice it, 
turn it into pixels on a mental screen 
so that it perishes from dissection, 
like the making of slides from muscle tissue, 
or the pickling of Einstein's brain slices 
in formaldehyde. 

Then bleach it, 
make it mundane and  
flat, render it meaningless, 
(meaning frightful things) like 
dull concrete on which we walked, 
the gates of heaven traced out in neon, 
solar reflections upon lake-swells and sea-waves, 
stained glass image, red and saintly 
(meaning sacrificial blood).