141) My Strange New Poetry

In my strange new poetry the lines will be black
and long. They will be dense with not ordinary life
but the wiry vitalism of a guy in a Pirates cap
heaving a pink rubber ball against the side of a drugstore
at midnight. There will be sentences but not
only, not always, not just properly, some stray dog
will skitter through the torn fence beside the polluted river
to half bark half growl at kids in a metal dinghy.
"Gimme the worms, Jody. Gimme those worms!"
You, you won't quite know what you think--
you won't nod your old professional approval
but like if a tall stranger in tight jeans
suddenly in the kitchen at a party touched your neck
and kissed you hard or said "You stupid bastard"
you'll step back and a minute later still feel hot
and not forget the damn poem with its nettles.
You'll sway in it like trying to move through
a rocking Amtrak express halfway to the cooked city
with both your hands out and balance turned into
mostly raw luck plus nerve - it won't be
allegorical for you, no way, it grins
and calls you Big Shot and you narrow your eyes
like a Cherokee hearing the wrong footsteps.
Gime those worms, Jody. The back lot of
the Ramblin' Root Beer distributor has for some reason
two goats in it and in my new black lines
they too get expressed, It's a thickness
and a dark kind of living in the words
in my strange new poetry that soon I put
right on paper, next week or sooner than that.

---Mark Halliday