454 W 23rd St New York, NY 10011

February 19, 2013

kenbaumann asked: This is an alley-oop, but: why silence?

silence is where feelings are safe from every dogcatcher of an artist

the vast majority of meanings
that can be made out of one’s feelings
stand in the same relationship
to one another
as glue does to horses
            (out of the swift came forth paste)


we drill hole after hole into silence
and call it a great success
when we can get something on the other side to drain

(poets must tramp for days with callused feet,
and the sluggish fish of the imagination
flounders softly in the slush of the heart.
And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth
of loves and nightingales,
the tongueless street merely writhes
for lack of something to shout or say)

silence is where we come from
& it’s pureandsimple vanity
to confuse it with speechlessness