When you walk between both soundhouses
You will see
that the lighthouse ain’t the only keep
emitting sense
for the feelhouses – those phalluses –
reach, tingle
make the hairs… how they stand on end,
shivering.
And the scenthouses billow upwards,
smoke signals
of the fragrances, fair and foul, to come:
ethereal masts.

When you walk between both soundhouses
you’ll feel free ——
for the lighthouse wards off crashes
twisting counsel,
for the feelhouse wards off creeps
– it begs permission –
for the scenthouse wards off stenches
olfactory white noise ——
The soundhouse wards off sounds-to-be.

I walked outside in Tuesday morning’s
cold, gusts, ice
between a man and a woman both
saw neither
until my periphery noticed
me between
two soundhouses: both emitting scrapes
scratches, both,
nails upon jail cells, burrowing,
two humans
scraping gilded tax papers for sums
hollowed. Both
harrowing one more future of
reinvested change.

The Lottery. Scratchoffs heard, unseen, warn:
“crags ahead in the dark”

---

 

about the 54 poems written at 27 ::

After much deliberation, I decided to keep the whole tradition of doubling my age and writing that many poems in a year. You’ll notice that April Thirtyish has already passed, so I’m late in posting. I’ve gotten about half of them written and will begin posting this week.

I started this whole mess with 46 poems written at 23, most of which are still up on the site and many of which are awful. Those poems I wrote because I read somewhere that the best age for poetry is 23. I was turning 24 and had an existential crisis.

Then I got over it.

Suddenly I was 25 and thought, “Why not do it again?” So I doubled my age and wrote 50 poems at 25. Again, most of these are still on the site and I’m proud of one or two of them.

Now I’m twenty-eight and it’s almost a principle, almost an undeniable fact of life. When the wild Lancelot is in his native habitat and his age is in an odd year, he will be secreting poetry. I do this because poetry is important, because we must take an active role in the creation of new language or else our language dies.

That means I must write, I must learn how to create better poems even if I’m awful at it — everyone must because the fate of our culture’s at stake. For me, this year, that’s 54 poems at 27.

So I’ll schedule these suckers out and give it a go. Follow along with the category 54 @ 27.

---

image by scott1346

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