writings and ramblings extracted from my journal that I write in in the winter garden at UNBC

everything around me looks like poetry
everything I say is the absence

I listened to the words of chain smoking blues poets
and nomadic punks
rusty growls and scratchy beautiful shouts
even my favorite poets can't speak to a well tuned-ear
tone deaf opera singers who tell a story of fucking up, dreaming, and trying again
So I tried again, to talk to you, to talk to my words.
but all I hear is
the perforated pitches
and garbled sounds
so I sty quiet
and I see
that there are only two types of well-read poets born into language

the silenced, hopeful, and beautiful romantics
and the unorthodox screaming,dreaming, well-spoken revolutionaries

the babies that are tongue-tied
the skin beneath their tongue disallowing the formation of words
grow up keeping their pen to paper, and sealing words behind their lips

and the babies that get older and ripen into being tongue twisted
the clumsy state of tongue hitting cheek but missing teeth
their words hitting us like lyrics in a song
harsh, loud,muffled, mumbled, but heard,
their clarity has nothing to do with pronunciation

we learn their lyrics and they ferment like fine aged wine
replacing old conceptions of who we thought we were
and they construct new values and hopes
into the beating pulse of a pumping fist.


I was thinking for a while that the only poems worth writing are those that are screamed out
mumbled
cried
or shouted
but then there are those poems
that get our heart pulsing to it's own beat
the ones created by
the tongue tied

who lay out words that have never been uttered, but amplified by their own beauty and fear
and I fear these words

the words that need no microphone to be heard
the words that need not be held up
because they're locked in
and they know the struggle
of gently training the strongest muscle in their body
to stay quiet
to enjoy a moment
to let words speak for themselves
and to keep their tongue from ripping the flesh beneath which ties it to the floor of their mouth
I fear their quiet revolution
as they know a strength that can tear
but instead holds back

and so they're held down and grounded
by a fragile flap of skin
nearly as thin
as the paper
that I wrote this on.