Mimi Liberman

1)
On Poetry

Rhyme, Rhyme, Fine:
Puzzle of words
Pull my insides in every direction
While your intestine cringes
Tubes spilling out of its compression cage
Who are you to write a poem?

I, I, I, superior
To your rhyme and jargon
Worthy of a diagnosis of swine:
This fine line
Is lovely:
I subjectively love thee—

And now you see
It’s far better to scrawl letters for the word and not the penultimate consonant
Syncopated sound.
Devour lines and curves scribbled across the ruled book—clack—
Out fly the last three letters,
Floss clicking spit-mound crumb-sized
Leftovers from the Last Supper
That filled a gaping thoracic cavity
With an invisible heart.

No surgeon can stitch together
Scalpel-split skin
Of a carved poem into the
Back of a wrist,

Dripping plasma no longer presents
Limbs with oxygen,
Malnourished, limp to numb and
Lifeless worm squirms at the edge

Of your skeleton
Shot
With a tranquilizer gun.

Resign from flowery prose,
Your pen deserves an esoteric life of its own
And I’s will go
Undotted and t’s uncrossed
But forgotten is function, so why fret over spitballs of rhetoric flying through your back teeth?

2)
Mammalian Reptile

Thinks the world fled my senses,
Left behind
Preying for pray—

Something to twist me senseless

Slithers in my aorta, poking out its head. If I
Let down my guard, the smirk
Travels the length of the
Vena cava into a passerby’s
Field of vision leaving
Him in a state of
Confusion:
So sorry.

Your presence spins the color wheel of
My eyes from sea blue to iron rust to blood-red
To stone gray
The chameleon of my emotions vacillates
Between hues faster than a steaming cup
Of tea cooling in the snow,
It boiled your confusion
It scorched your frustration:
So sorry.
Really, I am.

My tail swirls the murky swamp,
Creating tornadoes in water with
Mud and air and molecules,
My yellow eyes glaze
The surface: I see you. You don’t
See me, I’m invisible to you
Who entered the oblivion but
The hunter stalks every wade
And paddle and stroke
And when you least expect it,

I’ll snap.

3)
The Poet

It is a small person, on the
Inside it can be anything
On the outside because it keeps
Paper wrapped up inside its veins in a place
Where no cardiac bypasses exist.

It is a large heart, inside
The small person, it pumps
The scrolls of tear and
Rips on burned ends,
Parchment replaces the brain
Feelings used as blood
Because the lead only worked for
The problem and the ink only
Marked on the hand but the
Nothing worked on the
Mind of the
Poet inside.

It walks by itself, but
It is never alone for it has
The psyches of thirteen trapped inside
A concave organ of thought
It feels lonely in the company
Of its own schizoid presence
Because it knows not what is
Real: only what is
Felt in the world where
Nothing is common and
Clichés warrant a death sentence.

It sleeps with others while
Dreaming by itself because
Nobody is aware of its
Thoughts of its
Love of its
Innermost secret that
Exists on the blood of the naked page
Wrapped up in the stark vein

It will be joined with tears and peers after the autopsy.

4)
Living Inside a Poem

I’ve never seen a world
As pretty
As festive
As promising
As a blank sheet of paper
With lines.

I can create
I can mistake
I can feel in this world
I am god.

The ideal is scrawled onto
Paper and the utopia in the
Line is thrown into
Fruition by my pen.

And it’s rather lovely,
I think I shall stay for
Eternity in the world where
The leaves crunch
Even after they’re stepped on.

5)
Today

The nights are so concrete,
So brisk and black
With the shimmer of hope for tomorrow’s regret.

Parasites under your skin
Gnaw away silently,
But the moon fades
Yellow and catapults down,
Writing the words for tomorrow’s
Script and the crows
Barely call.

Glass dunes wash
Together over the crystallized
Horizon and the moon
Disappears and the sun
Glares and you squint and
Stare out of inner-space and into
Where you want to fly because
Tomorrow appeared and yesterday
Has yet to
Arrive.