Sometimes when I look back at poems I have written, I can't remember how my mind sprang spontaneously from one topic to another, usually somewhere near the middle of the poem. Perhaps this is what Ginsberg calls the "profound poetic leap." Perhaps it is a form of noumenal thinking. For example, in the poem below, I began the piece by considering subtle changes in the patterns of my life, changes in habits, processes, and relationships. Then at the turn of the poem, it is as though my energy, in this case negative energy, can no longer be contained, and I must move into the external world to find meaning.
ACTS OF GOD AND OTHER MYSTERIES
I smoke cigars now,
but only once a month,
and I no longer eat meat at all.
I still carry my arousal around
like a succulent fruit
in a semi-permeable pouch
just south of my solar plexus,
and I think of you when it rains
like it rained today.
I don't spend much time
binding or unbinding my hair,
or enough time combing it
to cause even a small
thunderstorm.
I have found myself
strangely alone
and craving lightning.
Your going has left an emptiness in me
bigger than my original self
and I have denied words
until they no longer spill down my arms.
I write now in shorthand, disabled
and unwilling to transcribe the details.
Let the leaves fall.
Let them say she was taken
on a Friday, full-faced
and plastered on the cover,
no sense denying the truth.
Let them say she could twirl
like a leaf weighted down by her stem.
"Did you see how she fell?"
Like a soft, Sunday paper, still folded,
predetermined as a morning crepe myrtle
still loaded with dew. Still looking for wholes,
still as vulnerable and transparent as a grape,
let them say she was seedless
and without wings.
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In this poem, the leap is not as sudden, with the action being more like a slow climb up a hill before the reader is dropped into a series of sensory observations, and is at last left to contemplate whether love is as uncontrollable as death after all.
QUANTUM LEAP
From the side of the road where the ditch climbs
and grape vines cling to the rocks,
where fruit green and new sings the promise of red,
and weed tops quiver like summer corn,
I could tell it was a bad spill.
All those cars, barely damaged yet strangely askew,
bodies flung according to mangled aesthetics,
and that woman so horribly flat on the road.
I'd seen death... on the screen, in my dreams,
on the run, but never so close.
Still, I knew she was dead,
not just limp like some actress gone soft,
but adhered to the asphalt
like candle wax, cooled,
maintaining her contact with earth,
and except for the watchers
there to watch her let go,
all alone.
It's the details that do it.
Blue shorts.
Yellow shirt.
Slack hands.
Half afraid I would see the release,
I looked straight ahead.
One-way traffic
reflected in chrome.
Pave the way for the going.
Remember the ones who have gone.
You don't plan
to find yourself
breaking a lane marker,
washed by rain,
making a farce
of the NO PASSING sign.
So, I look at your hands,
fingers curled 'round the wheel.
At your confident grip,
not at odds, not at ease. Not like me,
always hoping someday you'll let go
and just reach, just for me.
How empty my chest feels.
How close the night.
Air so thick I can't breathe,
rain so near I can't see.
I have reached for your hands
past the fear. So much smoother
than wiper blades slipping
I've shifted from side to side like rain on glass
until, determined not to hide
behind a veil of feigned control,
I reach, and breathe... again.
I dare to fly,
and breathe,
and spin.
I dare to hope you'll break my fall
when I let go.
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