Jane Butkin Roth
BULL
I know a man,
an artist with contemporary style,
who is enamored with elephant turds.
He chooses to confide in me,
explains to me the process:
the molding, shaping, curing as
the shit takes form.
I feel his
passion,
the adrenaline rush of
his artistry in motion.
I attend an exhibit in his honor where
Harvard-educated and
big
bespectacled experts
come to admire his elephant turds,
which have been transformed into
flags, bookshelves, even schoolchildren.
It looks like bullshit to me.
Thoughts drift
to tomorrow's poetry workshop,
where I'm an impostor,
not a real poet,
my lines as flat and dry as the Mojave.
The real poets drench their paper
in rich symbolism,
literary allusion, and mythology.
They twist and sculpt their words like
my friend with his elephant turds,
turning something
into something else.
Sounds like bullshit to me,
but
tomorrow might be the day
I become one of them
by osmosis;
so I'll take my place again,
like some fat, stubborn rock,
waiting to sprout flowers from
no roots.
So far,
no matter how hard I try
to see things differently,
the sun, to me, just shines;
the sky is only blue, and
sometimes,
yes sometimes,
it just plain rains.
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