17 July 2017

I want to write an honest sentence.

I want to wear an honest bonnet like a helmet to hold out “fake news.”

I want my honest sentence to do good work.

I want my headgear to include only actual reality.

I want my sentence lived out in minimum security poetry.

I want my poetry to enact a radical moderation.

I want to tease out fundamentalisms until their threads become available.

I want the collage of tree and lace to exist as texture more than as image.

I want to taste dirt to see if there are pesticides in it.

I want “dull as dirt” to be my slogan, because dirt is neat.

I want to write about the green bird who uses a palm frond leaf as theme park ride.

I want to know the name of that bird; without names, there's less decency.

I want to get him out of my head; he's infecting my syntax with a verbal virus.

I want to avoid cognitive decline by inviting parasites into my body.

I want Alzheimer's not to be the symbol of our politics.

I want to write an honest sentence about a dishonest world.

I want to be funny, but not a laughingstock.

I want my honest bonnet to make me Professor Bitch. (That's not want, that's is.)

I want the old hag to leave me her super powers after she enters “memory care.”

I want a world without quotations.

I want to have an empty nest that's full.

I want to be that bird on that leaf on that frond in that field beneath this sky in this place.

I want the mountains to lean down to me.

I want my dog to tell me what she smelled and why she rolled in it.

--for James Jack