Adam Strauss


from Apology

  20
Multiform; “forlorn; the very word is; like a bell”; “all the drowsy syrups of the world” out of their stick; their slick; unmixed; aloft on air’s every current; moonlit; clouds; see; blown; moon see; clouds; pilings-up-upon; clarity endures; endears itself to existing conditions; I feel too modest to spell that which I love; “lovely love”; moon; oh moon; lovely o; loveliest letters; loving; all; oh no; I; “forlorn”; words; fragments from out quotation gone geologic; that the from there; crevasse cattycorner to a cairn curious to elsewhere in the region;

  21
X; of origin; a verb future will find; why the faith? Why not? Why? Y as it is lettered; yells; lows; poppies; hills cars drive past; I drove past; past; no; post; no; pre; no; ur; yes; ur; before yes; yes; yes contingent; concordant to no; now; now; no woe as was all too recently; everything recent in epic time; everything elision; time epic; taking place in; epic; in epic; minor;

  22
“The dumb” “can” “be the divine”; it’s hard to resist resisting notions pertaining to predestination; uncertain versus indeterminate; versus; turns; what turns? The problem with the beautiful lamenting figuration “genius slipped its root” is there’s no root; only tap; electron; dance; step; step; step; restraint as it only distantly relates to repression bordering oppression; restraint versus; central circumference; oxygenates;

  23
If I dare
Chronicle
My wrong to
Its circulatory
System I
Doubt I’ll
Ever
Again sing
Song; soul
Rebel against
Privileging an
Ultimately
Tiny
Part as
Totally;

  24
Rich people; people with enough money for dinner not the dress-code;
“Man well dressed”; incorrigible;
Manna
After having
Made a bed;
Pressing
Itself in
To be removed remade
In a better image;

  25
But it feels
Honest;
How I feel
Honestly
Doesn’t matter
Anymore than a
Living one hundred and
Forty pounds of anything else
And that one body
Should be
   Meant isn’t
   Necessary;
I don’t want to be scary;
I wish I could
Reasonably disbelieve
I ever made a case against safe;

  26
Safe is always better than dangerous from every angle such that there’s no score to say let alone play; safe is not never-fails synonym for abashed the vasts verilying; safe is risky; safe is; survival; safe; save; safe saves; by fine lining; everything by fine; I am not fine with the inherent connection between me and my words; words are; inappropriately I appropriate words; I hope I can be an adequate apology; apology not defense;



Adam Strauss has poems forthcoming in Drunken Boat; & Scantily Clad Press fairly recently published a chapbook of his, titled Address.

 
 
 
previous page     contents     next page