A Machine to Make Noise

What I lack is words that correspond to each

minute of my state of mind.  —Antonin Artaud

When leaden words rise up free

Before this poem’s through

Meanwhile immense between each word

The dream of a Chinese empress ambling timelessly

Words on the lamb from the law

Prison-break words hungry for thunder

Go ahead and laugh

When words reproach the air

Coughing words fly off into the dark

Like a flock of angry ecstatic crows

Words that make so many starts

And stops in so many worthless places

Remember when words

Scorched ancient Chinese secrets?

When words turn tragically Mississippian

Even the meaning of day becomes laughable

Imagine the last word of love

Floating nonchalantly in a cocktail  

See? some words

Do taste of icy wind

Words mixed with hidden spices

And spat out in a frenzy

And then a sort of oblique bewilderment

Accompanies words

A coagulation of words which grip

The entire surface of the tongue

With the simplest muscular contraction

The tongue carves breath into words

Words bloomed eventually  

Rot right?

A whirlwind of savage words

A painful exacerbation of the skull

Strange and violent words

Seething deeply in the sweetest thoughts

To what in the order of principles

Can words reasonably accede?

Is it possible that some words play

Between substance and lucidity?

Or somewhat lazy words linger

Only long enough for whose ears?

A small plunder of words

Stolen from the feast of language

And don’t be mad at these familiar words

They speak familiarly to everyone they love