Salt's Worth

When you read a really great poet
Not a poem a poet
Who produces poems undeniable
In composition, form and style
A poet who knows what she’s doing
Like bee keepers gathering honey
Like plumbers sticking together
Their pipes
And putting them in their right places

Yea like that, a real poet you read
Words, sentences, paragraphs and phrases
That makes you salivate
That, that make you late for the dinner,
You were supposed to be at
A half an hour ago… I’m talkin
A real poet who knows all the words
And could write about the surface
Of the moom

Never having been on the moon
And could still stroll you through moondust
Lunch you with a picnic spread
Out in the bottom of a favorite crater
Turkey sandwiches and Blue Moon beer
Moon pies for desert of course
Stretch out on the blanket and nap
Until moon day’s dusk and watch
On the dusty horizon the earth rise

A real poet can magicly turn a single word
Into a multitude of words large enough
That if they needed fed it would take Jesus
Some fishes and bread. The kind of poet
A single nail she could totaly shingle a roof
And just to know that a 2x4 is a two by four
Her poem could build the house entire
The word screw the doors are up
And the baby’s in the nursery

If a real poet uses the word… say, hungry
You may not starve to death but
Before she’s done you’re going to want to
Grab a bag of Fritos, a moon pie, something
Because when this poet is talking hungry
She’s talkin hot beef Manhattens
Cherry pie or choclate cake and ice
cream talkin’ sweet potatos and I mean
Yams and country ham… hungry.

And she’ll make you belive it she will
With her sly and wiley will of words
That and the inescapable fingers of language
The tap-a-tap tap of her hard painted nail
Striking on a table top
You don’t even need an ear to hear it
And you hear it
Like the squirly essence of voodoo
A whiff of a wood fire a-burn in winter

That’s the way the good poets do it
The ones really worth the pressman’s time
Who has to set the type, ink the presses,
And cut the paper down to size
Then print-it sort it-bind-it ship-it
Clean down the presses, sweep the floor
And then before ya know it you’re on the moon
With your copy of her poem, your fritos and
The tapping sound of a woman’s nails in your ear.