Fierce:Fragile

In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences – so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not –
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It’s like what I’ve heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

For more of Taylor Mali’s brilliance, click here.

Hover
The imagined center, our tongues
grew long to please it, licking

the walls, a chamber built of scent,
a moment followed by a lesser moment
and a hunger to return.  It couldn’t last.  Resin

flowed glacially from wounds in the bark
pinned us in our entering
as the orchids opened wider.  First,

liquid, so we swam until we couldn’t.
Then it felt like sleep, the taste of nectar

still inside us.  Sometimes a flower

became submerged with us.  A million years
went by.  A hundred.  Swarm of hoverflies,
cockroach, assassin bug, all

trapped, suspended

in that moment of fullness,
a Pompeii, the mother

covering her child’s head forever.

Nick Flynn is one of the poets that opened my eyes to contemporary poetry. I’m usually a classics fanatic, and I’m grateful when someone who is still alive grabs me with their words. 

It took me several times of reading this poem to understand what it is about, though in retrospect, its absurdly obvious.

Bök is most famous for writing a book of sorts (Eunoia), which uses only one vowel per chapter.  Take a look at Chapter E, if you’re interested in what that looks like. 

I came across this poem of his in a poetry  book about geology.

landslides
drag you down a funnelled pit
through the waist
of an hourglass
into an obliette for all sleepers.

gravel showers
bruise your body till you swoon,
the sand a fluid
solid, spilling time away
into dunes on display in tiny jars.

geology writes
a eulogy for all that it buries
by pressing words, like moths
between pages
of a mammoth encyclopedia.

In an effort to get people to look
into each others eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say “I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.”

When she doesnt respond
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.