Aught No. 5 - Sherwood, Poems

Aught, no. 5 (2001)

Kenneth Sherwood

Codex Elegy

lost its pages
and we despair of ever
feeling again

Her presence like it was
before we lost it

she lost them
and all

was so lost
that we were driven
to be poets madly
despairing, or

       were we hoping for the
       future or were
             we all just
          hopping mad

In the Mode of

appalling clutter
of days, raw
words recollected in transit

here reins one moment
the normal program
conditions
waves that cycle

impossible setting out
without pen & watch

my weather channel
has done this to me

Sound Off

          without intention
   words,
      absorbed speech
        columns sway

                           torsion
                  outbidding memory re
         collection that grazes

      tense
              field of forensic parti
         culars, vague

                          clouds words
              doors without knock
                   -ing

[title from the book by Spencer Selby]

Short Crib

tha s

an affirmative

over
narrative weathervane
stammer
sweet stampede

only the poet
in sum this?

for Hank Lazer

Frustrating the Line

other people digressing here
people back tracking
one heck of time-lapse

an additive form

paste it back to y'all
wants to grow
seems linear

connecting to remote
Poem Server, He said,
you twist
and I said I do.

Some Query

words mimicry
       turned,
defiantly abstract
     between syllable, sound
       and music
   would that I could
        be
     only so
               cry
    laid low in the
       backseat of an excuse
to mime lines

for Benjamin Friedlander