Succulence by Bret Norwood

This sentence, once congested, stuck,

now chases the cursor slipping in the white,

a serpent, mottled black, behind a blinking mouth

that’s like destruction seeking to destroy itself,

sallying forth into the potential semantic permutations,

the fantasies and fallacies that words and reason make,

into the undefined and unexplored expanse of white.

The sweetness of thoughts run

like honey-water inside the agave’s stalk,

tasted with the tongue of mind,

the delight of ideas made as music;

abstractions harmonize in accord,

but render counterpoint in contrary clauses.

The mind alights on metaphors like

a dragonfly on stock-pond reeds.

This fabulous, winged thing,

seems to alight upon itself upon a reed,

but as observed by the foremost cautious

binocular-faced naturalist,

it misses the mark,

as meanwhile, crouched in reeds,

this careful watcher notes

he wasn’t actually looking.

This poem is empty of meaning.

Don’t search or scry or scratch,

but savor instead the steady stream

of sights and sounds,

if succulence is found, or not.

And now my fingers that dance upon the keys

slow their tempo and cease.