"To a Critic" by Noelle Kocot

It must be habit that drives you,Like laughing to oneself in the intense billowingOf a vulgar sunset, like writhing aroundIn the back of a pick-up truckIn a fit of pure Pentecostal joy.Anything is possible in your pilesUpon piles of reasoned X,Cultural references strewn about like bits of twine,The momentum in you swellingWith each disjunctive phase of the moon,And I feel as if we've met beforeIn those refineries of consciousness,Scanned the hidden passageways togetherStraight into a reverie of broken glances.I often wonder what would have become of youHad you continued to sleep,A child under a haystack of needlesNestled within a tornado's placid eye,While icicles streamed downAs ingenuously as a bug scaling the sorrowOf some existential page.Instead you've chosen to harvestThe serendipitous nuancesSprouting wildly like tumors,Crackling in the shadow of an electrified fence,Until there is nothing but the bellow of seasonsWhich grieve beyond the emptinessOf haunted silos like a giant sigh of shame.And the pinstripes of lightThat slice these ragged wordsOnly point to my yearning to return to dust,And I fear that I will want this until I am,As you are, artless and ready,Rising to catch the stillborn day.Photo: brianfuller6385