Urine and Lilies
for Pablo Neruda
I had an early love for Walt Whitman.
I did.
He was not by any means a concrete idol,
jutting out over the deserted lines.
he seemed, to me, to simply be
a Man of Truth.
And I've wanted to tell the truth,
since the age of seven.
Flipping through a tattered copy
of Ecran at the age of sixteen
I found my namesake.
I wanted to fall into the creases,
and disappear into the little folded pages,
smelling of urine and lilies.
Whitman sang of America
and I sang of Despair,
which is everywhere else.
Once I learned the supernatural
impressions of word pairings,
I wrote a love poem for every
year I was alive.
I don't think anyone appreciated that.
The love I felt was too naively erotic.
And though I am no, Walt Whitman,
I am the voice of the exotic,
of the psychotic, neurotic.
The Quixotic.
See, I can make rhymes too.
A poem of Pablo Neruda and mentioning Walt Whitman; WOW! I enjoy the line, "once I learned the supernatural impressions of word pairings, I wrote a love poem for every year I was alive," how in the world do you do it? You write definitively from the heart and soul, no question about that, but to write with your soul about people you admire, love, or care for is so magnanimous,I have to say you are becoming a favorite of mine as a poet....I see you up there with Neruda and Whitman...Excellent work here, why have you not been published??
ReplyDeleteI'll continue to read and continue to be fixated on your words. Thanks for the privilege a.m.
why haven't I been published? the easy answer might be that I have gone to the wrong places. most of the rejections I get tell me they love my work but it doesn't fit their criteria, even though I tend to be very selective with the places I send my work too. lol...anyway...
ReplyDeletegot any advice?