You
can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing,
they soar and descend . . . I bow to them . . . I love them,
I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them
down . . . I love words so much . . . The unexpected ones . .
. The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they
drop . . . Vowels I love . . . They glitter like colored stones,
they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew
. . . I run after certain words . . . They are so beautiful that
I want to fit them all into my poem . . . I catch them in midflight,
as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set
myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture
to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae,
like agates, like olives . . . And I stir them, I shake them,
I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them,
I let them go . . . I leave them in my poem like stalactites,
like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck,
gifts from the waves . . . Everything exists in the word . .
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