Stripe The Beast!

What? Poet come alive!
Please! We know the truth
of this simplest, softest

alchemy: You word
the thing! As if you could
stripe the beast

before it’s known!
Before the photograph!
We readers offer pliant

faith, the supple sort
of balsa for one carving
with unyielding dreams

inconstant matter. We
must suspect a poet
put starfish so opposite

night stars, after all. But,
what we want to be most,
we sold, for things brightest

in quick promise, easy now.
Yes, our buying sold us,
an impossible conceit that,

but you, most of all, agree
what can’t possibly be real
is the truest thing of poetry.

We are Lake Erie, 1960!
Write a poem; Caribbean
all your readers, please

--turn office desks to coral reefs
--in lightning on stone tablets
--a wizard’s throw of tiny bones

across page or screen--
and we promise to believe!
Demand our surrender to you

instead! Re-deify the inside
of our heads! Write a poem
that’s a trail of food!

And forget that we came
begging, fingers full only
of your same air.


lostdogreward@yahoo.com
poet, poem, poetry, Clem