Words, words, words
for Alex
There is a list of things that one must never do while
striving to become a member of the Hall of Fame
and you can aim me in your sights Confabulo
for I’m as much an ardent sinner, syllable spinner,
just as much involved with all those verbose images,
encyclopedias, libraries of eloquence and froth as you.
Perhaps we should have been born female (there’s a
thought). For women, with their slim and urgent explorations,
probe with tender fingers all the real stuff inside, and yes,
they’re not afraid, as we are, to touch each other too (with
daggers sometimes drawn so tenderly) and then embossing
something of their inner world onto their songs.
You want a list of my attempts, my friend? I’ve made
my own mistakes, they’re in my books (as they’re in
your’s). Just turn the pages. Here and there there’s
one that shines with honesty and then it disappears
again into the soup.
What’s left is just the bones of some devoured chicken.
Before the meal, clucking and cackling, strutting around
the yard, pecking for worms and words. Never really
able to stretch its wings and fly.
We’re coxcombed Walla-walla birds, Confabulo,
you and I, that’s all.
The Australian Walla-walla bird flies round and round
in ever decreasing concentric circles until it eventually
disappears into itself.