over the rainbow

 

first revision of yesterday’s:

over the rainbow

I am learning the language

to make a poem

 

there is no minimum of words

I think you know the tune

 

I have to be wrong

a lot to be right

a language is another country

far and wide

 

wraps you in a flag

you fall through

to find your feet

 

.

 

a poem is another world

spins on its own – on how many wheels?

 

you go there when the cupboard is bare

 

remember this room?

place furniture where suits

 

one cannot help but tell a story

there is no animal less than this

nor tree, nor stream, nor stone

 

a language is a philosophy complete

has its own geometry

swallows religions whole

 

.

 

poetry is like talking to a dog in a haystack

 

and past perimeter limits

the colours come

who’ll name them?

 

each one after a cloud

I once knew

and how we caught the sun

 

a language is all in your head

the obverse reverse

standing army

 

truth is made of pure intention

some days there’s no one at home

not at all

 

.

 

consider the idiomatic hutch

and everywhere-luggage

brought you so far

 

I break a rule until it’s gone

they won’t try that again

 

shall we approach

to press the skysill?

 

there’s nowhere else to make a poem

 

we must have dreamt a way

 

.

 

a language’s loyalty is assured

furthest galaxies obey

 

I am committing to heart

these lines

an echo after

pond

drop

tear

 

place of birth

the all-ancestral lamps to light

and appetite

then mirth

 

.

 

 

write with a mirror

work wrong-sidedly 

 

a language

yet to learn

is the bag of tricks you are

I am learning the world

to make the words

 

I have brought my passport of poetry

 

.

 

to make a language as I go

I have to write the poem

that cannot be helped

you must know it

 

I am spreading out

dust, wings

road long as life

 

no moments the same

but here we are

make up it all up

from what’s to hand

 

I greet you with beginner’s luck

(take off one head

screw on another)

replace tongue too

tune heart

adjust a landscape

 

it’s these funny spectacles we wear

 

.

 

where things have no name

no seeing trees for the wood

 

but here’s my pot of gold

meaning – yes, and you know where

 

I am taking the words

just as they go

to tell you

we use all the light that there is

 

.

 

I learn the rules by breaking them

like stones

it’s what they’re for

how to make a world whole

 

set out no clue who

but words are the way

I will find where I am

where we

where you

 

notice how into the future

everyone comes tumbling?

you can call that the conversation

 

I’m telling you

because you might want to know

 

and here I cannot help but wonder

will I ever be believed?

will I be understood?

I work with words

to make a world

where else is there to go?