Monumental
When asked the breath of those words poetry escorts, still you show slumbers, graven image, as though Anacreon's your oblivion, and these silences come from no other courier's hand.
—Jeff Harrison
The Day The Laurel Hid Twice
soil reads what you speak
soil through lace is dew
soil's a simple word to be able
to lure grass along a long wind
when you walk under the moon
the soil is your foot's mirror, that
came out wrong but you know
what I mean, while you gather up
dollars the soil sleeps in, side by side
with the poor dead scientists, soil's
furrow has as much in it as the grass
has on it, even thru the slime the
letters "S" - "O" - "I" - "L" still clang
together, ring dry and crisp, I mean
—Jeff Harrison
Verses that softer spring from their cottony chapter
spring, verse,
your tune's
train borne
by no retinue --
were your
echoes to
rest, your
face yards
dark, what
darker night
could Jove
throw?
unless diminishment, why,
echoes were copies ever
and unless diminishment,
echoes were mimicry ever
rhymed
satyrs
(& the
rest of
that in-
corporeal
inventory,
combines
of hominal
& else)
(tales of satyrs,
centaurs, sphinx,
mermaids & such
in verse, portraiture
out the poets' throats
racing verse's echo
with speech's echo)
put the brakes
(periodical,
periodical, until
this dawdle is
drawn to millennia)
on undiminished
animalistic
enterprise
in ladies &
gents, but
the birds
& beasts,
participants
likewise
in song
passing
from
throat
to throat,
what
verses
did they
swallow
to circ-
umvent
human
utterance?
—Jeff Harrison