Jacob Oet
You don’t write poetry
For my parents
You don’t write poetry
You breathe it
No
you can’t breathe
underwater
You can’t kiss a poem
but you can taste it
No you can’t
swallow light
Before you watch a poem take wing
you nurture it
Then you let a poem go
You do it if it kills you
Because poetry
is like being dead—
Coming back to life
hours later
You get your hair wet
You shiver when you break the poem’s surface
feeling wind
Then
you call out the river’s name
and it answers
You call
and I answer
A poem is an echo
And if you are timid
I will be timid
But if you are mighty
if you sing out--
I am mighty; I sing out
Write me as a letter to the stars
I will shake their hearts
and bring them back to life
You don’t write poetry
You breathe it
No
you can’t breathe
underwater
You can’t kiss a poem
but you can taste it
No you can’t
swallow light
Before you watch a poem take wing
you nurture it
Then you let a poem go
You do it if it kills you
Because poetry
is like being dead—
Coming back to life
hours later
You get your hair wet
You shiver when you break the poem’s surface
feeling wind
Then
you call out the river’s name
and it answers
You call
and I answer
A poem is an echo
And if you are timid
I will be timid
But if you are mighty
if you sing out--
I am mighty; I sing out
Write me as a letter to the stars
I will shake their hearts
and bring them back to life
Sap
Inside my body a tree is
growing. Lord,
I know the sting that raindrops bring;
the cold that falls
like evening in the skin;
the taste of silence
like metal. I am familiar
with wind, tussling my hair
like prairie grass.
I am familiar with fire.
Dry things burn so quickly.
I remember California. Lord,
the streets are pale. It hasn’t rained
for months, and if it has
I haven’t seen it.
But I know the taste
of dry saliva. Silence takes the air
as autumn turns to winter.
My body is a tree.
The transition too slow
for my taste. When sap dries
on the roots it becomes rough
like moss. Inside my body a tree
that has become slow,
is waiting for the rain.
note to self
stop wasting time wishing to write better
Write
all that you ever wanted to see printed across the faces of stars
like postage stamps Write letters to the universe
and back
and walk outside every once in a while
just to hear the applause of leaves
smell the clouds and their glorious soft tickled whites like eggs
laugh because you’ve never seen a silver lining, only soft daubs of pink
like bacon. Make this your breakfast, waking up
to the birds tracing black arrows across the sky
watch this through eyes
like telescope lenses
and wonder at wonder, and please
let happiness please you and
thank you is a nice thing to say
every once in a while.
A Letter
By the time you read
this my body should be gone and my touch
a memory
But there are sounds
like easing of rain through the trees
bare heels slapping floor:
How everything persists in you
and this
Is to be raw
You touched me
your fingernails
piano storm the electrical wires
of my veins. I think you will find
wrists
to be the most subtle reminder.
Your lips like crescent
moons
fell and shattered
infinitely upon
mine
as if we were two oceans
Your cheeks like the first
snowfall over
autumn ground
But remember
what a pencil looked like
in my hand. How it changed.
The first time I saw you
you were
a letter
to nobody, waiting
to be heard,
but I hope
to have opened you.
--
Jacob Oet lives in Solon, Ohio. He has loved writing and making images since he was a boy. Jacob’s poetry and images appear in The New Verse News, and OVS Magazine.