R. Virgil Ellis

CANTO 4 Ponder Underpinnings

Ponder underpinnings
that have brought us all
to a life-threatened state.
For instance, language.
Is it the problem?
Is it the solution?
Is the problem in the source of language?
In the shift from ? to language?
Let me explore.
Is the method electronic,
or any instant transmission
of the multiple offerings of the verbal font
(as if all those swarming flounder
could at once rise to a poem‘s bait,
airborne school scaling finitude),
or rather is it of the jelling kind, where
in the frothing and bubbling soup
certain combinations agglutinate and then harden
as if taking on spines and torsos
that flex with ambidexterity?
Consider:

THE NEW POETS MUST,

since language is an endangered species of genetic
engineering, untwist academic umbilicals,
unbirth squalling linear words,
re-conceive diaperdom
kingdom come, under-
pinnings that have
life-threatened
fossil-fuel
state
conceive
an inverted
whirlpool encoding
into oceanic consciousness,
impelled globally into spiral
linking, emerging brave new words
twisting into gluons drafting wildest
cadences, oral worlds wet and bawling with
cauldrons of boiling silicon, spilling fusion
poetry, radiating the solar state, spiritual heat!

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The 2River View, 4.2 (Winter 2000)

2River