Outlandish
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
True poetry, its tongue, has never lived
As daily language used in market stalls,
Or homes, or streets. Impurities are sieved
Out or are alchemized from mating calls.
A word in dialect ascends to heights
It could not dream of in an alley’s dank
Walls. Island words are taken up in flights
Like Ganymede beneath hot Zeus’s flank
To be among the gods. The clauses of
Lost Appalachian songs arise again,
Transmogrified to dreams of tortured love.
Old foreign phrases capture willing pain.
..No matter what the spoken source of spheres
….Of space-like lines, they pierce our minds like spears.