Always another room
The World Doesn’t Stop
The world doesn’t stop for poems.
It stops for audits, consultations,
diagnoses, and invoices. It stops
for board meetings, annual budgets,
and skewed stockholder reports.
The world doesn’t stop for poems.
It stops for military parades, celebrity
sex scandal, and Papal visits. It stops
for political diatribe, arms deals, and
reckless presidential leadership.
The world doesn’t stop for poems.
Lines strung across a page hang like dead
mistletoe, are passed beneath unnoticed
because there is always another room
to get to on our deliberate ways nowhere.
Joseph Gallo
April 17, 2008
post-time 11:48 AM
5 Comments:
For the precious few on the planet whose worlds do stop for poetry, may they long continue to find each other in order to savour delicacies such as this.
Here, here, Ms. Manx!
I may have to write a poem about that.
Wait---I already did.
The first image is of my empty classroom in Hood River, Oregon where I taught creative writing. As you can see, I had lots of students. ;-)
The other is of a former brothel which is part of the colorful (and quite distant) history of the small enclave of The Dalles, also in Oregon.
May we find each other indeed.
Good poem, Joseph. The rhythm is solid and balanced, and I like the alliterative sounds, especially in the first stanza. [audits, consultations,
diagnoses, and invoices]
Cool.
Like notes in an accidental jazz riff, these things make themselves. Given enough time, something's bound to stick. ;-)
Thanks for the praise, Kyle. Missed you at Friday's Martin Espada reading. You may not have missed much, but I was hoping to catch you seated there. More on that later as I wrote something responsive sure to endear me to him and his fans. ;-)
...But the world does stop for poets, Joseph.
Else how could we ever live with ourselves and that nagging sense of telemetry?
Love your color, my friend. Always.
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