Ars Poetica by Rusty Barnes

I want to fuck you lonesome.

I want to teethe rocks and spit gravel.

I want to suffuse you with irony.

I want the world to open with your clubfoot.

I want the apple tree hanging with used condoms.

I want a spare bedroom when we argue.

I want to gird my lines with peristalsis.

I want a cheap hardback volume of Frost.

The sting of the lily pad/the softness of the bee.

Like Kinnell's Fergus coming to the ground of his making.

The plain breath spent on this: the Blackburn journal.

Odin One-Eye. Robert Creeley. Jim Harrison:

Odd fellows I've come to love especially when I bleed.

I want to find a street corner named Marylebone

--and roost there, toothless.

I want to seize your gentle ear with my lips and tongue.

What poetry strives for best is living language aptly said.