Sentenced To 1000 Lashes JustFeelMaybeNoNow
Don't you remember what you felt like the first time you dissected any feeling thing? I remember feeling astonished at how compacted everything was on the inside. Feeling like yeah, I am definitely doing something that feels taboo right now. Feeling, in seventh grade biology.
Maybe you, too, remember when your fantasies were exciting. I remember imagining maybe how the sun would feel on my face and the wind on my skin, sandblasting me and the rest of my days maybe happy. But today, far from maybe middle school, my imagination oozes from under an anvil, maybe the way some plants look when you smash them. How they smear and maybe hang together by ligneous, vestigial bits. Maybe I just always get this way when it has been so long. Maybe we both do.
I said, "I have taken no creative writing classes. I only studied math for a very long time. So, is this a metaphorical structure or no?" She said, "No, what you have written is a shaped poem." LOL. No, my poetry is third grade. I said, "No, see? It's meant to be like a candlestick?" She said, "No, I'll have to read it," but what she thought was, "No, it's not the literal structure, dumbass."
Now, it isn't that history is important. Now it is that ahistoricity is dangerous. At least when it comes to ideas; try this one on, now another, now take a bow and now lick the distinction, like you would a wound. Now, who am I kidding? Now we are all beating, thumping, gurgling, sloshing, whooshing now away, anyway. Our bodies are noisy now but we are not made to hear them. I said, "I wish I was smart enough to outsmart myself." She said, "I know what you mean." And I was pretty sure that now she did.
No, if it weren't for these fears, just maybe I might feel like someone now.
PS It was not actually a formal sonnet, it didn't have to be, but abab, cdcd, efef, gg in 5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-9-9, with the volta. Here, I will show you:
It’s not just
your Mouth,
nor just your
brackish, sweet smell,
that beckons me
south
like Pavlov’s
dog to a bell.
You make me to feel,
a cliché, I will
admit.
You sandblast me
real,
an absolution by
grit.
Why are you
going?
And where is it
you will go?
Dollars be
knowin'
why the elle-en-gee
must flow.
‘Regasification’
sounds quite grand.
“Progress,” they
say, for my promised land.
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