P O E T S ON THE LINE
a continuing anthologyFounded by Andrew Gettler & Linda Lerner
NO. 9 & 10 T H E M I L L E N N I U M I S S U E
Edited by Linda Lerner
ANTLER
Snowing Inside Me
Walking through snowstorm, snow
on hat, shoulders, beard,
I realize it isn't snowing
inside me.
My body prevents snow
from falling in it. It snows around but not in
my chest, not in
My heart, not in
my arms or legs.
My eyes see each flake
and it registers in
My brain
but the snow is not in
My eyes, not in
my brain
Is it?After death, if I die in the woods
and my body decays where it falls,
It could snow in the space
my lungs took up,
It could snow in the holes
where my eyes were,
It could snow in the skull
when it caves in,
It could snow where my stomach
my intestines were,
Inside my balls, inside
where my cock was
It could snow, it could drift,
white, deep,
It could cover my skeleton
snowing inside where my body was
So many years.
Workers Should Be Happy
Workers should be happy
Their factories are closing down!
Delighted to be free!
the slaves are free!
Instead it's viewed as a tragedy--
"How survive, how support
wife and kids,
How buy all the things
You can't be happy without
without a job?" Talk about labor shortages!
What about poetry shortages?
Why not create 6,0000,000 new jobs
to save the Poetry Industry?
6,000,000 new poets to write epics on
Girls-boys-love-death-work-play-freedom-
wilderness-Eternity?
Shouldn't there be more poets than factories?
Shouldn't factory workers be able to support
their families by writing poems? Only one epiphany is needed to discover
Just how powerful poetry can really be:
The fact day and night exist because the Earth
turns round itself
Is in itself a miracle
We should be struck speechless by
8 hours a day,
Speechless, motionless, gaping
Breathless to the point
of near heart-attack.
Here, smoke this joint alone here
And consider the unfurling maple leaves
moist and velvety as puppytongues.
Consider 60,000 years before Christ
Neanderthal buried their dead
with bouquets of flowers.
Rather than crying when factories close down,
cheering when factories close down.
Rather than factories closing down
no factories existing in the first place
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