I Put Here Some Words
Carl Boon
I might not spell, I lisp at starlight,
I fail.
These are foreign to me, vowels
foreign to my ears,
consonants not my streets,
not lavender, not soft
in the way they fall across the ear.
Stuttering, impure,
I was made for stories instead.
My hills are silent,
so I speak to them.
I’ve gotten used to not being heard.
But this is a mood. I have moods,
and blues, and Jerry Garcia
plucking at my hair
as I lay in bed. But I’ve chosen
this life, this old alliance.
I am not John Hurt, John the Baptist.
I bring no one life, no one back
from the dead.
I fail every time—in seven swamps
in north Florida
you will find me, seven of me,
reciting, smoothing over
what’s left of my hair. The air
is still and hot. A poem
is supposed to crawl and leap.
I can’t touch the girl I love.
Carl Boon lives and works in Izmir, Turkey. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, most recently Two Thirds North, Jet Fuel Review, Blast Furnace, and Sunset Liminal.