POETRY

is not a shapely
blot upon a page, not 
a metric cascade
of sweet and scented
syllables tumbling 
through the air, nor
is it the tap and click
of keys encoding
Important Thoughts
and Feelings Deep
across a backlit
screen. Poetry is
none of these
because it is
the quid of things,
which is why 
we find it
so infrequently
in words, and so 
rarely in the minds 
of those accounted 
wisest. Poetry 
is the cooling
ash that holds
the form of what was
burned and has not 
fallen through 
the grate. It is 
the pause 
in the slide of slightly
oily fingertips
along a tingling
thigh. It is
the quick slip
caught in the middle
of an old and 
well-told lie.

Johnstone, Gruber et moi

Herewith, audio from my reading the other night. An enjoyable, albeit occasionally odd, evening. The unexplained phone call that happened in the middle of my reading was from, I later learned, a friend who had wanted to come to the reading, but had a plumbing emergency. She'd called to find out if the reading was still going on, which the somewhat socially awkward store clerk didn't bother to explain. Same guy had come into the store during Jim Johnstone's reading, cut through the audience and made a beeline for the cheese plate, where he noisily helped himself to cheese and crackers while Jim read. Classic.