Subject to Change
The neural spark
is ill-defined, a cloud of unknowing.
Nothing begins anywhere.
The tail of the snake
is its neck.
The body grows out of its closed eyes.
An uncertain vapor trail
sheds hieroglyphic fragments,
they could be words,
or only
the residual cooling of a brief potency,
a fast-evaporating speculation
now only a dilatorily dripping
from its dormant inkwell.
You don't know, you just don't get it,
until it takes shape,
then a flint strikes a low adumbrate sky,
only then does meaning arrive
to burn your tongue.
You, (this is your part),
with have to make changes,
fillet out the serpent's pin-bones,
or words will stick in your mouth.
This is how a poem begins.
This is how a poem begins,
not with a thought or a whisper
but with a sly electric slither.
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