I wrote this poem especially for today...well, actually for tomorrow (Thursday), because it'll be the first day of April! My post for Nobody's Rambler is on reading poetry out loud (specifically an e.e. cummings poem, because so many of them invite you to feel them on your tongue, like ice cream!), so I'm posting this in solidarity. It's still rough, and I'll probably tweak it someday (I just added the end of the second stanza), but it's presentable for now. So read it, enjoy/hate it, leave praises/criticisms (preferably criticisms so I know what to change - but still enjoy it please!), and I hope the weather permits for a good opening to April!
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words in mid-air
by Matthew Stalbaum
read the lines aloud. feel them
along the edges of lips, in the timbre
of breath, voice, the rhythm of heart
beat, and there to find
what words searched for
sound turned to the physicality
of a tongue's flicks and glides
to create lowing, singing, vibrato
a moment's pitch, never
to be found again (there will
be new ways of singing still)
in the words, a strange taste, as though
in them were Spring, April, Love, or rather
skin's roughness, heart's desperation, and voice
to ink and inking, when the pen lies
still to carve more breathe into the air
This poem reminds me of the fact that I never read aloud; I'm not a big enough fan of my own voice to take the words off a page and sound them out myself--I'd much rather imagine the author's voice and words, instead.
ReplyDeleteAlso--"still to carve more breathe into the air". Breath! lol