POETRY IS THE JAZZ OF LANGUAGE

A picture, they say,
is worth a thousand words...
and it’s true
single Images dance and
sometimes sing,
but they can go only so far...
they can be poetic but
they aren’t poetry.
Poetry is something else.

Poetry is the jazz of language,
washing over the tongue
like vanilla ice cream on the Fourth of July...
the purest thoughts, and clearest,
unleashed from somewhere inside the brain,
imagination melting, dripping,
trip, tripping over the synapses,
pulling the head back,
snapping all the senses...

Crack the whip of language
against naked hope;
and desire, like a remorseless harlot,
surges up and out
and over and over and over...
Words say what eyes can’t
and hands won’t.


Poetry is...
Poetry is the jazz...
Poetry is the jazz of language.