feeding soul
via shared poetic experience
shitshow word jam practice
lang
u
age

codrescue showed me the corpse
silliman unlocked my mind
whitman sang limitlessness
jack jacked our souls

important to break logic
synapse retraining retrieval recovery
tabla non-gratia
personae non gratae
unwelcome rules in grammar and autocorrect
creative bummers
speed bumps
word dancing becomes a learned *skill*
habit forming
it is one hundred percent guaranteed to be good
for your soul:happy development

meet me in a field of letters
electrified connective chemistry
of mind
unlocking
original syntax
like an infection
caught in high school
first in bova’s dueling machine
onto rama llama ringworld and the cat-tails of niven
i exploded into space
fancied myself a writer
wrote
drew pictures
prepared *top secret* notebooks
laden with heavy warnings
more pomp than circumstance
top
secret

word dancing

i want to release
you
from rules and models of logic and language
to find
your unique rhythm
cadence
trajectories
nadir and apogee
break your _english mind into smaller bite-sized bits
spanish portuguesa conversational korean
drawings as letters
expression
that just feels sacred
like tibetan’s book of the dead dying done
by the dead sea
in a dead language
very much living alive
a leaping off point

jump into your thoughts
quit scrolling past them
tranquilizer device liquid powder keg of sorrow

i prefer
rather
a natural
tonic
for your soul
in something
discovered together

about you
and your marvelous voice

listening
across time and space
and the pressure of starlight
the green grass and high tides forever
of our time together

*i am here* < index page

© 2023 – a walt whitman ai poem by human john mcelhenney