Monday, April 27, 2015

NaPoWriMo - day twenty seven


(talking)

i walked through the door
and she was already talking.
not a stream of words
but a torrent, a wave.

she just kept talking,
drowning me in sound -
a wall of noise -
a battering ram
against my thoughts
in this previously
quiet moment

non-stop talking
as if desperate
to fill the spaces
with something,
anything but
silence, talking
in circles, the same
introductions, the same
invocations unchanging
rhythm of the same phrases
lurching back and forth.

the talking continues
even now at home
as she kneels
to say her prayers
unwilling to receive
the peace, nothing
in her mouth
but her own
unceasing
tongues.

The Student by Billy Collins - NPM27

My poetry instruction book,
which I bought at an outdoor stall along the river,

contains many rules
about what to avoid and what to follow.

More than two people in a poem
is a crowd, is one.

Mention what clothes you are wearing
as you compose, is another.

Avoid the word vortex
the word velvety and the word cicada.

When at a loss for an ending,
have some brown hens standing in the rain.

Never admit that you revise.
And--always keep your poem in one season.

I try to be mindful,
but in these last days of summer

whenever I look up from my page
and see a burn-mark of yellow leaves,

I think of the icy winds
that will soon be knifing through my jacket.


Collins, Billy "The Student" The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 2005. 51.