THIS RULE
YOU'RE SITTING HERE
LISTENING ONLY TO YOUR INNER COLLISIONS
YOU'VE GONE
TO THE MOVIES WITHIN YOURSELF MAN! WAKE UP
YOUR LOVE
IS ON HER WAY TO YOU IN SIXTEEN AMBULANCES
WHILE YOU
DANGLE FROM A STRAND LIKE YOUR ALTERNATE I
IS MADE
WATCH OUT! THERE'S NOBODY HERE
AND THE AIR IS TIGHT AS CLINGFILM
AN ILLUMINATED KITCHEN IMPOSES ITSELF WITH ITS CLUTTER
A TOYSTORE LET LOOSE UNDER WATER
BUT THE DISTANCE
TO THE I THAT FILMS EACH WHO AND EVERY WHERE
EQUALS ZERO AFTER ALL
ENTIRELY
THE DAY THE AGING POET DIED
THEY ALL SAID HE CREATED HIS OWN UNIVERSE
A STUDY CONDUCTED BY HIS YOUNGER COLLEAGUES CONCLUDED
THE SEA IN HIS HEART HAD CALMED
THE STAR IN HIS I HAD FADED
THE GALAXIES IN HIS MIND DISSIPATED
AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
.
THEN HIS LEFT EAR BEGAN SNOWING
FROM EXCEPTIONS
There's a scholar by the name of Robin M. Bernstein who writes in her text "Dances with Things" on the distinction between Objects and Things, in which the Objects are used as a means to an end, whereas Things are things with which one negotiates. One of the things I enjoy most about your work is that, it seems, poetry and poems are never a means to an end for you: I don't get the sense that you've written something with the intent of evoking one specific feeling or though, but instead, that you write to give the poem itself agency.
When I read something like THIS RULE, I'm suddenly made aware that the poem is interpellating me. It commands me to try and find it across the page; it tells me to divorce it and integrate it from all the other poems on the page; it changes the chronology of how one interacts with the page itself. Bringing to life isn't the right word here: you reify, you make a poem and your poetry into a Thing, a Thing that doesn't live, but a thing that still acts and hails and reads the reader.
It's a non-hostile roasting of the poetic canon, and it's wonderfully done.