Imperfect Poem

from Resurrection by swampmessiah

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lyrics

I wouldn’t write a perfect poem.
I wouldn’t even write a good one,
because the gods, all the deities of vengeance,
which are the heart of your limitations,
would come to destroy me.
Any word that is better than average
brings envious wrath.
Any image or metaphor, any thought at all
that can brighten or illuminate,
clarify or distinguish,
will come back to me like a volcano’s outpouring—
earthquake and explosion as ecstatic warning,
poison gas, fire and lava as grand finale—
an overreaction to my slight achievement.
So, I would strike myself dumb,
leave mouth and pen impoverished
like the land of my birth,
rotten and dull and sodden
like an abandoned farm or deadfall of balsam
fading into the black humus,
decomposing rather than descending
into the future.
I would make myself numb,
grunting the monosyllables of my class,
spilling clichés in a feint of clumsiness,
fumbling adverbs and pronouns
the way my parents would bumble
at a properly set table.
I will fail in my art
to succeed in my social disgraces.
I will keep my heritage
to keep the peace
and put no good words to paper.
To allow you your self-conception
my voice will lack fertility
and never produce anything more than mud,
nothing more than the sediment at bog’s bottom,
and leave the world with no descendants
except biological progeny
who may also decline the perfect poem.

credits

from Resurrection, released September 28, 2022

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about

swampmessiah Saint Paul, Minnesota

I was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1957. I've been drawing all my life and painting since about 1975; I started writing poetry and rants in, maybe, 1976; since 1996 I've been recording those poems and rants, usually with a "musical" backing.
I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. My partner and I have two children. I have a day job that is in no way artistic. ... more