Snorting Poetry
In the beginning
my friends said that poetry
goes well with a salad
or dry rubbed on a steak
or by even itself with a nice, dark beer.
“It just, mellows you out, ya know?”
Why is it then
that I am sitting in the gapping mouth
of my empty apartment living room
on the dry tongue of my couch
staring stir-crazy into a series of
little white rows of diced letters and metaphors.
What am I doing?
I’m snorting poetry.
Line after line
I’ve cut out the middle man of the stomach
and I’m taking it straight to the head.
I need an angry fix of Ginsberg.
I need to cut up Dickinson and T.S. Eliot
into little rows and drag them
through my nasal cavity.
I just did a line of Edgar Allen Poe
and black ravens flew into the open windows of
my eyes and filled my head
casting shadows on my trembling hands and knees.
But that was after I did a line of Dickinson
and because I could not stop for death
I snorted it through a dollar bill
and thought about it for a while
and decided not to go gentle
into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the
light bulb in the ceiling fan.
It keeps flickering and I can’t see
the next line of Whitman.
There’s no T.V.
I had to sell my T.V. to get a hold of the Whitman and the Poe.
I had to sell my roommate’s T.V. to get a hold of the T.S. Eliot and the Ginsberg.
You see, I’ve got this crazy poetry lady that I meet
at the corner of Bragg and Saunders
her name’s Dorianne
you may have heard of her,
or seen her in the long fingers of your daydreams
but she’s sold me this new stuff that’s supposed
to be the next big thing -
Lux, the Dickman brothers, Lee-Young Li.
I am sorry
I don’t think there’s any hope
of detox or rehab for me.
All I see
all I taste
all I feel
is poetry.
So all that’s left to do
is snort more poetry
misquote the raven
“Evermore.”
