Ode to the Dictionary Dot Com

You were right, Pablo. Poetry is the insightful evocation of words with a dictionary nearby. It is the "the luxury / of one bee" and the "splinter / of your ancient wood perfumed" muddled by our minds and expressed by our tongues, or vice versa.

Nowadays, kids write poetry on computers, so what a long strange trip it has been, but like many other foot-washing poets, I, too, believe that poetry cannot be written on the computer screen, jaded by the pallid glimmer of artificial light.

You declare: "I receive / my words / in a loud, clear voice / directly from Mt. Sinai. / I shall convert / forms to alchemy. / I am the Magus."

How bold to say that great inspiration does not lie in some invisible or abysmal mount gluttoned by Olympians, but rather in the scruffy, viscous pages of a lexicon. Students do not learn nowadays to write with the dictionary or thesaurus nearby because of the advent of the hyper-information basket, bearing immediate knowledge at one's fingertips. I think of Neftali saw our children today, he would deliver an unforgettable glare straight into their eyes and piercing their souls, and seeking or rather requesting, one last time, that someone in this lost crowd of word-swiftness will turn around, marble looking-glass in hand, and say, "I'll take on the new role as leader of the poetic gait, whittler of the momentous absurd."

That'll be something. Such is the danger in velocity, shaken up, stirred, and offered in a martini glass with broken promises and passé poesy. People do not understand rhythm anymore. Rhyme, when dragged on a leash and placed under your nose, still caries no smell; mood is what they want. Feelings! Revelations!

Take your time with it! Send it on vacation for a while.

The House

Dear Pablo Neruda,

When you wrote "The House," were you being facetious or maudlin? I read it and I don't know whether I should run away or emote some kind of dilapidated depressive countenance; either way, I'll be on the move from myself. "My house, the walls whose fresh, recently cut wood still smells... sullen scars, men without money, the mineral claw of poverty." I would say you are being scooped up into this world you do not understand yet. You are too young, too innocent, the kid in his pajamas who sits by the balcony on the stairs listening attentively and giggling to every adult word slurped during a dinner party. I, too, yearned for the sweaty brow, the pleated pants, and the G & T.

"Later I loved the smell of coal in smoke, oils, axles of frozen precision, and the solemn train crossing winter stretched over the earth, like a proud caterpillar." I get it; I take in every single, solitary coffee drop of wisdom you fling to the world with pen and ink. You longed for the passing of time, but time is like a caterpillar, proud and obstinate, and also very inscrutable. You did not make "time" any other living thing, for it could not be a cat, or a sparrow, or even a gorilla, each entity representing some element and movement of time perceived by the human eye, but in this case, in this poem, it is a caterpillar.

I love the sound of "caterpillar" when it escapes from the mouth. It makes the tongue twist and jive, only to shoot towards the teeth at the penultimate syllable and then suddenly disappear into the depths of your maw.