Drawing a Bulletproof Blank
You may say I’m cliché,
but I hadn’t.
I’d never felt anything like it.
Not nauseous--
squeamish--
no.
Likened to a rampant bull
or gummy bear mutiny,
the feeling was boiling but ~sticky~
--intrinsic and enveloping
as though it would trade my life for its freedom.
The feeling,
a noun in its own right—a feeling without being felt,
swirled inside me,
slippery and suffocated,
^Submerged
in a crooked stream.
And as the stream fell from horizon to sea
>From Sky’s boundary to Earth’s edge<
I relished the sexist* salamander.
*the salawomanders get no credit at all.
The blue diamond on his forehead,
The slime slipping through my toes
like yolk from a wounded eggshell.
"Oh jeez,"
you colloquialize.
"This is going to be interesting."
Like a Floydian opera echoing
echoing
echoing against and among grotto walls,
the feeling had a purpose but no home
a corner laundromat but no clothes.
The feeling stemmed from a void:
“When someone enlists another’s specific skills
to fit their specific need, they __________ them.”
“It may start with c-o-n? or c-o-m?”
“I could do so much more if only I knew a verbose welder.”
-This missing word-
the one I could not grasp,
could not explain well enough to take hostage
(duct tape, anyone?)
consumed any faith I had in a seventeen-year vocabulary,
a three thousand-year language.
But, after all,
Desperation is the English way.
[Literary Magazine final 2009. In a couple days I'll italicize the words and phrases I was asked to use according to the prompt. I earned a 105%. Word.]
but I hadn’t.
I’d never felt anything like it.
Not nauseous--
squeamish--
no.
Likened to a rampant bull
or gummy bear mutiny,
the feeling was boiling but ~sticky~
--intrinsic and enveloping
as though it would trade my life for its freedom.
The feeling,
a noun in its own right—a feeling without being felt,
swirled inside me,
slippery and suffocated,
^Submerged
in a crooked stream.
And as the stream fell from horizon to sea
>From Sky’s boundary to Earth’s edge<
I relished the sexist* salamander.
*the salawomanders get no credit at all.
The blue diamond on his forehead,
The slime slipping through my toes
like yolk from a wounded eggshell.
"Oh jeez,"
you colloquialize.
"This is going to be interesting."
Like a Floydian opera echoing
echoing
echoing against and among grotto walls,
the feeling had a purpose but no home
a corner laundromat but no clothes.
The feeling stemmed from a void:
“When someone enlists another’s specific skills
to fit their specific need, they __________ them.”
“It may start with c-o-n? or c-o-m?”
“I could do so much more if only I knew a verbose welder.”
-This missing word-
the one I could not grasp,
could not explain well enough to take hostage
(duct tape, anyone?)
consumed any faith I had in a seventeen-year vocabulary,
a three thousand-year language.
But, after all,
Desperation is the English way.
[Literary Magazine final 2009. In a couple days I'll italicize the words and phrases I was asked to use according to the prompt. I earned a 105%. Word.]
