Day’s Instruments

1.
They say we should write about our misery
soaked selves, parade our inadequacies
before all, pad about in cracked slippers
Why speak about other things when you cannot mean
what you say, when meaning retreats before every attempt
to give it a face, make it something to look at, as it stares
back, gripping our tattered coils, a green ocean
calmly embracing our bubbles rising toward air.
They say we should write without expectation,
in rooms where walls are deaf to invocations and imbroglios,
that we should implode with delight at every silence
that greets us. How little they have learned from our refusals.

2.
We took the words we were given, severed earthworms
jumping and twisting in our hands, clouds of red dust
extruding from their skin, yes, we took these words,
gulped them down, knowing they were not ours,
and used them. This way and that way,
we used the words we were given,
words we were told no longer held meaning,
their surfaces porous, their sides cracked open,
and we poured what we could from them,
over our heads set on fire, our feet
sticking up from the earth.