nowhitebelts

Text Poem

I did not ink these paper pages.
The words simply grew here.

Not just here, but in pavement cracks
and basement windows.
Jumbled in stormdrain grates.
One must wade through all the text
just to get to the Laundromat.

All that text that drowns the earth.

Im not sure if it was here before us,
but I do know it wasnt like this. Once it rained
Milton for forty days and forty nights.
And Icarus wore wings of Whitman
that melted in the hot summer sun.

Now, empty whispers and soapbox manifestos
beat against my body like broken glass, and words
rise like smoke to form high-rise soliloquies
and sky scraped anthologies of every
human utterance.

As I watch these words grow,
shudder descends in italicized print, dropping
like a spider from the rafters to kiss me
on the cheek. Its cold insinuation tumbles
down my spine. Out of desperation
I stretch my fingers out to trace the roots
of all these words back, along the baseboard.
Back to ancient throats long dead--
only to find that the few words I had kept for
myself, hidden in my veins and held gently
in my mouth, had slipped away from me,

out the window to chase dragonflies and sink
their serifs slowly into the summer grass.