I Eat Poetry

SOBBING UNCONTROLLABLY IN PUBLIC PLACES

    That was the very room that we made
famous with our love, where our souls flew,
crying out and sighing. And that was the room
in which I wrote about her in my dreamy logbook,
thinking a few pages of blue ink would do the trick.
That was the very room in which, the wonder of love
is how I put it, the wonder of love and I succumbed
to the law of physics and all of her beautiful moves.
"Well, you're sure nobody I would pick from a crowd,"
is how she put it, and gave me a look that ate me
slowly as a poem, no wondering allowed.

    And blah, blah, blah.
Thankfully, I will never be one of those
who expect too much from a poem, who want the poet
to explode before he goes, leaving the rostrum draped
with glitz. Thankfully, I will never kill time by striking
a pose: malcontent who dreams too much, sullen fugitive
beneath the amber lamps, prince from a fallen regime.
And I don't have to go around sobbing uncontrollably
in public places to get my point across-that is
for those who want cheap thrills and headaches,
the personal touch. Let them read prose.

    Of course, any young poet
should be able to describe a room,
a few pages of blue ink in a spiral notebook.
Any young poet should be able to describe a room
so poignantly it makes your eyes wet and you continue
reading with heavy sighs. But remember, there was a girl
on the bed, and we were in love, and the room was dark-
I really wasn't a poet yet. Sure, there should have been
a villanelle in her every move, her every look another
blank page torn from the moon, but my mind had a hole
worn through it by her touch, and the funny thing is,
I don't remember much. Oh love, you crack me up.


-John Engman

THE BUILDING I LIVE IN IS TIPPING OVER

The archaeologist who digs deep enough
through the rock and rolling tiers of ape man
and ape woman, will find my lowly bones
just as I left them, in rows like a xylophone.
She may play my ribs with her rubber mallet,
reviving a mood from ages ago, the haunted
little tunes of my carbon 14 content.

This is what she will know:
I was a homo sapiens with few employable traits,
not much data for the data base: American male,
biped and carnivore, a blameless five-foot-eight.
Perhaps she'll bring me home in a canvas sack
and stash my remains in a storage vault
as if she's collecting antiques. . .

I may be worth money someday!
My skeleton, the backbone of some new dream!
I doubt that, but imagine how pleased she'll be,
digging through the stream-of-consciousness rock
until she arrives at my flat, and petrified me,
caught in the act of whispering sweet nothings
through the fossil of a keyhole . . .


John Engman