30. Lines upon Lines
Lines contain and
control and direct
us, telephone wire
suspended, sagging,
boundaries marked
between each square
of a sidewalk, the
streets themselves,
parallels abound
where lines exist,
we find connection
the likeness between
two people, simple
correlations of selves,
you say you lack the poetry
gene (a gene, I wonder,
for words? what would
keep something
that essential from us?),
the words that hit you
are dead or meaningless,
the hum of context,
the drone of content,
the lack of structure
leaving you grasping
for some sense of words,
or maybe just pushing
them away, but there is
a music in any words
even those laid out so
rigidly in lines as
these or those that
try for only the
quietest melodies,
really I became
an archivist because
I was a poet, both
search for then create
order, both fail, leaving
that gap between desire
and conquest that
marks the best
we humans make, you
might not see the
structure here, the
carapace of sound
that holds these few
tiny words together,
the outline of a thought
that grows organically,
the ends of a branch
ramify and ramify
again, dividing them-
selves into increasingly
smaller halves until
the tree is a pattern
of fingers, of hands,
a living reaching and
reaching out, all of us
living parallel lives
of our own, an archivist
and a poet, a person
of work and a person
at play, words used
to give direction and
words created to
provide some glimpse
at an invisible world,
the world at our feet,
the street we walk down
one side of not recognizing
that person on the other
walking towards us
and then walking away,
these patterns calm us,
so we find them in our
thinking, in our cities,
in the records we protect,
and even those records
may be unredeemable into
any order again, but
we see it, just as you
see this poem that is
actually words for me
to say, for you to hear,
clusters of sounds, moving
outward but also toward,
as we move away
only to move toward
something else, they
I know Atlanta is hot
and muggy in summer,
worse than the intense dry
heat of Phonenix, a mythical
city that burns to
the ground each day,
but you’ll grow used to the
humidity, it is human
sweat and breath, the
heat of our bodies, some-
thing we share, and it is
what brings us together.
control and direct
us, telephone wire
suspended, sagging,
boundaries marked
between each square
of a sidewalk, the
streets themselves,
parallels abound
where lines exist,
we find connection
the likeness between
two people, simple
correlations of selves,
you say you lack the poetry
gene (a gene, I wonder,
for words? what would
keep something
that essential from us?),
the words that hit you
are dead or meaningless,
the hum of context,
the drone of content,
the lack of structure
leaving you grasping
for some sense of words,
or maybe just pushing
them away, but there is
a music in any words
even those laid out so
rigidly in lines as
these or those that
try for only the
quietest melodies,
really I became
an archivist because
I was a poet, both
search for then create
order, both fail, leaving
that gap between desire
and conquest that
marks the best
we humans make, you
might not see the
structure here, the
carapace of sound
that holds these few
tiny words together,
the outline of a thought
that grows organically,
the ends of a branch
ramify and ramify
again, dividing them-
selves into increasingly
smaller halves until
the tree is a pattern
of fingers, of hands,
a living reaching and
reaching out, all of us
living parallel lives
of our own, an archivist
and a poet, a person
of work and a person
at play, words used
to give direction and
words created to
provide some glimpse
at an invisible world,
the world at our feet,
the street we walk down
one side of not recognizing
that person on the other
walking towards us
and then walking away,
these patterns calm us,
so we find them in our
thinking, in our cities,
in the records we protect,
and even those records
may be unredeemable into
any order again, but
we see it, just as you
see this poem that is
actually words for me
to say, for you to hear,
clusters of sounds, moving
outward but also toward,
as we move away
only to move toward
something else, they
I know Atlanta is hot
and muggy in summer,
worse than the intense dry
heat of Phonenix, a mythical
city that burns to
the ground each day,
but you’ll grow used to the
humidity, it is human
sweat and breath, the
heat of our bodies, some-
thing we share, and it is
what brings us together.
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