The Indecency of Poetry

Behind the ambiguity, the cloaking metaphor, the language used is indecent, it sets bear traps, leers at logic, claps ears. Poetry drives a train through heaven and hell, box cars swaying behind full of rowdy, rouged delinquents. Some have mothers who weep for them, some were born from mud wombs as wild as unbranded cattle. A poem may well bury its dead alive in front of our eyes, recite a lullaby backwards, then plant sweet nothings over the heaped earth. Lines of linguistic train wrecks crash their coupled words into snowy fields, then out will come the scatological oaths, the unglued bawdy survivors of their own gypsy jargon. Here’s the sleight of hand, here’s the real indecency - we are gulled into assuming we hear only the shy murmurs of a deeply respectable muse dressed up in its Sunday best.