my 2 cents

If art is not elemental
Call it algebra, call it an exercise in
Dead aesthetics, look at me I’m a poet
Writer, musician,
If it is not elemental
Call it philosophy, arguments
Whatever, not poetry, not art

If it is not all god, death, sex, struggle, violence, birth, need, love, fate
A red hot slug blasting your heart through your spine
Hit you like the first wet tong kiss, like the first time you came in
Someone’s mouth, like when you held your baby sister for the first time
Like when you saw a bloated corpse on the beach, crabs eating the flesh
Like when you woke up after a terrible crash, first light, begin picking up the pieces
Like when you think of the great terrible dream red sun breaking over the world
Sound and and fury and justice and retribution and death and hope

I have seen them come and go, come and go, perfumed rooms, talking
Of Yeats, fine. Talking of Whitman. Fine. Talking of Cummings.
But if it don’t stick, like the taste of garlic, or too much ginger
In the back of your throat, no matter reading them

It should smell of loam, bleed, leave track marks, stain white cotton and pink silk
Dirty bed sheets, scrape knees, shake and vibrate, be all wood and
Grass and sweat and the mud on the bottom of the river, the
Clay at the lake that sticks in between your toes, the silent terror
And mystery of swimming too far out past the break
That first break on the bus through cheap head phones,
the exposure to Whitman, lusty, all beard sun burnet sholders
or when you finally understand what the spring is. What death is.
If not that, forget it. It ant art. I don’t know what it is.