by Greg Baysans





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Mercury

   
Sex is the closest activity I know to writing poetry --
spontaneous and familiar at the same time, or
cooking maybe. A recipe then: tonight I'll add

a little chicory, a little chicanery, a little cannery
covered with cold rain and chicken shit. I'm tired
and can't get onto that bunk bed tonight but

want to get there because that may be where
there's a bridge to the plateau I'm looking for,
not this new-found one I enjoy some but,

as I said, am tired of. Blue body builders are not
company nor imagined visits to Braque galleries
with Scissor Sisters and Vonneguts enough.

No. It's baseball that's the best metaphor for poetry.
A long season, most games are barely memorable,
but once in a while the game's a gem -- say a no hitter.

Is the poet the baseball season or the relief pitcher
warming up in the sixth inning for an appearance in 
the eighth? Or is he the batter trying for a home run?

Even in an ordinary game, every move counts,
the moment as it happens, suspense, spontaneous
familiarity where anything can happen next.

I could start again. I could erase the above and start
again. Or I could repeat the start again but not
erase it all and start again or I could strike out looking.



 



"Mercury" appeared in Oct. 2007 Tipton Review of Poetry