This Is That Poem

from Miracle Strip by Matt Layne

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about

Music:
Ned Mudd
Fumerole
from Buffalo T-Bone

lyrics

This Is That Poem

This is that poem where I tell you
I love you with a slow-building
Coltrane kind of intensity:
heartbeats on the downbeat

and saxophones blending words
to whispers before flowing back to sax
and heartbeats.
Always more heartbeats.

A love supreme laid out soft
on Sunday’s bed as eggs sizzle
and biscuits bake.

Who can resist Coltrane and mornings
cat-stretching into afternoons
and biscuits?

This is that poem where you
catch your flight, and I,
portrayed by a young Dustin Hoffman,

sprint onto the tarmac
to declare my love for you
as you peer, confused,
out your little oval window.

You can’t hear me.
The plane roars.
Lights tap-dance around me.
The TSA drags me away.
No poets on the runway.

This is that poem where I tell you my love
is urgent as a Neruda love sonnet,
if only I had a talent for sonnets.
Counting lines and syllables is dreary work,

but if I could, I’d write how my love for you
grows wilder each day I wake without you
next to me; how my terracotta heart crackles
and flexes as love green-veins its way through me.
My love grows corybantic as kudzu:
wild, and quick, with enveloping lushness.

Neruda knew how to grow roses
and love. Coltrane’s every breath
blew supreme, while I bake
biscuits from scratch.
Who can resist
biscuits?

credits

from Miracle Strip, released August 31, 2022
Music:
Ned Mudd
Fumerole
from Buffalo T-Bone

license

about

Matt Layne Birmingham, Alabama

Poet, librarian, raconteur; Matt Layne has been poking hornet's nests and looking under rocks since he was knee-high to a peanut peg.
I reckon you oughta check him out.