5 (Prelude to the Overpoet)
from The Love Song of Crito Di Volta
At J. J.’s attic party I popped two caps
of E that must have been cut with LSD.
Lips of worms kiss me, while the wind slaps
the green out of the spruces and the stoplights; my eyes,
now blue-winged butterflies, tirelessly beat
themselves into caresses for the invisible,
who sing Leopardi’s A Se Stesso, in Greek,
as syllables pop into signals when I speak.
While epiphanies street-fight over me
I bet the sun my eye-lights for its rays
that these will be my most visionary
days and my vortex of utopia will craze
all humans attempting to see
beyond what they can see through their malaise—
I wear my visions on my sleeve and heart-
beat Suicide to death, and seduce
the tyrants with my hung tongue, and reduce
the religions. A tilt of my head eclipses the sun
whose ring I propose to everyone.
The overpoet will survive the poets’ noose
of slack, finally, after all the years of jeers,
which hunchbacked his spirit like Keats’ critics.
Why do the poets always mock the seers
and laugh at vatic voices? A vatic voice,
like a spokes-poking stick, will hurl the Dada-rider
skyward then down to the jetty of his mind,
and the overpoet, an outsider,
will lead the jeerers first, then humankind.
From CNQ 93 (Spring 2015)