WORDS LIKE SMOKE
Words like smoke
like mist
like smoke
Feathers
smoke
fur
smoke
Perhaps each
—Richard Denner
SENSATIONS
Words are familiar.
Only their positions are uncertain.
A pink diver circles Squaretop.
A dark hood caps Little Brother.
A chorus line of kachinas high step.
A bony dakini drinks from a skull cup.
Soft words become hard.
Quiet words become loud.
—Richard Denner
METHOD IN THE MADNESS
I write, then I type.
I retrieve, I retype.
I cut and paste images of real objects.
A process of recovery and discovery,
a contemplation of silence
in this maelstrom of violence.
—Richard Denner
REFUGE
Don't look at this poem.
You are staring.
I stare back.
Your eyes are clamped here.
It is damp here, but my throat is dry.
This poem is a shamble down an alley of broken glass,
relief from rowdy talk in the Tav.
You are asking questions this poem cannot answer.
At best you can rest here.
I cannot answer, but I sing a ragged song.
—Richard Denner
POETICS
What is the point, Jack?
Is poetry a conversation among the dead
and the poet gets it second hand,
a vampire moon sucking off the sun?
What is the poet, Jack?
A battered radio transmitting static between the stations
on a lonely stretch of road or a punch-drunk fighter
who's taken one too many hooks to the head?
Powerful emotions recollected?
The most exasperating art?
Potts makes an analogy with Mahamudra.
Williams hears a sort of song.
Garcia invents a ragged song,
and Yeats sees tattered clothes upon a stick.
Poetry is experience.
I awake to morning light,
thoughts sweet as honey buzzing in my brain.
Swatting them I get stung by real bees in a dream garden.
—Richard Denner