Bardic Genetics

This poem is essentially about life and death.

What is clear about this particular poem, compared to most poetry,

is that through the voice of the speaker the reader can feel the

emotions and thoughts of the author

flattening down into points

that come across as very personal

to delight and sadden the younger readers of today.

In almost all other poetry there is a “speaker”

who goes upward and upward,

a machine that absorbs vibration from bigger machines

but if it happens here now, in this poem

will there be anyone nearby who wants to see?

Maybe the dead know how to live more fully,

torches turned down but still fuming

like rinds around hot marshmallows do,

their divided subject matter focused primarily

on dark imagery with symbols of light inside—

I never understood the big whoop about Demeter:

reading is already a giant supplanting.

A new reader discovers this work

while he is leaving flowers where his dead bride used to be.

But it enables him to be reborn again each time—

Persephone is not the unhappy one

moving up the dark stairs

she considers in her consciousness as light

while the poem commences and commences

like the days dividing summer from its students,

sponges that sway in an undersea film

Until the poem spreads, and reaches its conclusion

that students are each taught to believe in things differently:

that Persephone was a goddess

who was abducted by Pluto,

the author himself a blue web that exists

years and years after his death

stuck inside the tired envelope of poetry

Who feels he finally is reading himself,

the spring flowers intense and papery

like they used to be, enabling the reader

again to feel the darkness

with a rhythm that enables the reader to almost see.

Was his conclusion merely a mistake, or did he intentionally

use elements of different poems until he finally made

his destination, from blue to smoking to flatten,

September confused with its light?

Source: Etruria (Wave Books, 2014)