What is the difference between a piece of prose, and a poem?

May 18, 2009 at 10:59 am · Filed under Poems and tagged: experimenting

We move fast along the cluttered highway

Between the cars with speed between our legs

I peer forward, feeling less feminine, and more a man than I

Ever have been.

When we careen close I veer and I ride up a steep incline.

When it drops I see ahead of me the

Brilliant ruffled blue water of the Atlantic ocean
And there on the dock at the lee of the highway

Thousands of tourists buy charms and desserts while the skyscraper

Tall cruise ships sit idle in the rolling surf.

We ride on and I know that somewhere on my tail one is waiting,

Somewhere to my forefront is another I must pass,

So I keep my visor low and I bleed into the bitumen with the hard worked surface of the rubber of my tyres.
We stop up short at the eastern end of the docks and I leap off, flinging back the helmet and slipping seamlessly into the crowd.
Their dinner time melody is like a glass chandelier and a thousand knives on ceramic

And between all that a constant roll of water and the crackling sound of sun on

Wooden boards.

I wonder who he is, where they are, when it ends,

And I move with the stealth of an alligator or a cat.

I locate someone who looks familiar and I ponder, briefly, whether they are friend or foe

They look at me and suddenly, slyly, they wink,

So they know, and reaching with my left hand I take the white cylindrical base of

A deconstructed umbrella, and nearing the gangway that leads to the ship I smack him hard

Across the face

For I trust no one.

And then I return, without hesitation, to the thrum of the crowd, lulling on the white summer day

And I train my eyes again on the faces seeking fiend, seeking foe,

Seeking someone who I used to know within whose arms I will be completely stripped bare

And no longer a person capable of harm, but a person capable of surrendering arms

And being made love to.

Where is he? That face that I know, that person who used to care for me long ago

I can feel a pressure in my breast which I try hard to conceal

But which for all of my zealous zeal rises still.

I am running out of time to find him so I have no choice, having now removed the one villain from my path I hold onto the pole and I move down the gangway toward the dark

Interior of the waiting boat knowing soon it will move away from where it’s moored and concealed in its store

I will ride the backs of bad men with a knife in one hand and

The sauce of their veins on my white knuckles,

Like somebody’s dream upon waking, there’s no mistaking,
I enjoy my own tyranny.

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