If words could kill is this meandering exposition an act of random violence?
Do these careless words strewn upon the page like bodies burning in the brightening sun willful, lazy, sophisticated in their own, animalistic way heat the fires of disorder?
Crafted, each to thee beseech an exclamatory screech for such rhyme I’ve not the time and so on and so forth.
Does symmetry come after ugly chaos or does she alight upon those who have got it “right” leaving the rest to their plight?
Do these acts of careless ranting magically reassemble into easy words with slippery purpose gliding thoughts into your mind on porpoise?
The breathing fish on sun-racked sea in green beams, transported through waters distorted these words seem ever slight passing quietly in the night unseen
:
but read
:
but red lights seeing heat behind my eyes glow in misfired earnest at the friction of words colliding in a constant, hard stream breaking like splintering steel upon my icy brow.
I sail slowly through the scree bumping fiercely into words and phrases conjunctions without that something more… the thought that swims below pulling all in tow.
These bricks, distinct in edifice tall are missing that mystery grease which fills the crease and dries up hard forging permanent thought where only words are wrought.
The architect’s triangle and rule now the poet’s tool do all the words confine through rhyme, rhythm and rhy wit these cloaks we find, refine.
Though a chance we do take of that common fate where a book is but read from cover to cover (the tender middle unseen). These clothes our thoughts do wear are all too familiar.
Thus, and thence, where and whence all these words all the same its not the players but the game. The team is united by none divided.
Discussion
Mystery grease is of course that elusive substance which seems to animate the words of certain texts, poems, and phrases causing them to alight upon the winds of thought, transcending their inky origins. Pure, transparent, and ephemeral, the strains and echoes of themes and melodies chorus single-file through the mind of the reader, who re-assembles this symphony of expression from its serial impression.
The poet in this case seems to have “protested too much” to be taken seriously, as the words mock their own refrain, being well-greased and quite mysterious in overall tone. Yet, there is a note of complaint at the difficulty of producing such an effect (random violence/careless words/ranting), but this engenders little support from the reader who has the asymmetrical perspective which tends to suspend disbelief and seek that “thought that swims below” the mere words which express it.
To us, this poem seems seamless, airtight, and lovingly crafted. To the author, however, each word “splinters on his icy brow” because he has had to go through the process of generating each word, and treating them as individual choices. The reader has no such role, and is therefore concerned with the broader issue of understanding the ideas being communicated. It is merely a matter of a shift in attention, a difference in the locus of focus.
In writing these words now, I am aware of the same problems facing the author, as I try to pick my way through the jungle of possible words, providing stepping-stones with the proper stride, and ensuring that they are placed on enduring terrain, lest the reader step and fall through to the murky underbrush. Reading and re-reading what will be read but once, the fragments placed awkwardly together blend into a continuous motion, like frames in an animation.