Jody's Notes
So I'm staring at these poems I've just written (in a cafe, in 1993), about five in a row. And I'm thinking: What the hell is this? "In time breeds a landscape." ??? Because I'm banging up the syntax. And I don't like banging up the syntax.
(I don't normally like banging up the syntax, anyway. Shouting incoherent things after you lose your temper doesn't count, of course.)
I'd always thought something like this: poems are hard enough to understand as it is, without banging up the syntax too. The poor reader needs something stable to hang onto.
I had no idea, of course, what I was going to go on to do shortly thereafter. With dialogue, especially.
(Predicting the future. Wouldn't it be cool if we could do that? Even about our own actions? I've heard that some people really can predict things like that. I'm not doing anything like that, they say. And then they don't.)
I'm always so impressed with people like that.
In the beginning,
we make cloudy love;
occasional features
abrupt in the mist.
In time breeds a landscape.
Always,
the first sprouts are mudlings,
the alien green later
unless the evil wind
blows through their tiny bones.
© 2008 Jody Azzouni