Dale Wisely
What We All Are (with footnotes)
Impostors.
We don't know what we are doing1
so we make our way through the meetings
while waiting to be exposed.
So far, corporate is buying it.
Manson Girls.
Following a loud thug
made of ice, bile, and failed art.2
This, because the saints are only whispering.
The noise in the arena drowns them out.
Immigrants.
Moving in and through places where
no one understands our dialect and we can only
catch a stray word or a phrase in the coffee shop.
We are lonely alone and lonely in crowds.3
Lovers.
I mean you and I are lovers.
Don't turn away!4 They told us our hearts
are where love lives, then they told us
hearts are mere pumps. They were
right the first time.
__________
Dale Wisely edits Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems and, with Howie Good, online prose poetry chapbooks at White Knuckle Press. He once pitched a musical, Funky Animus, based on the life of Carl Jung which was to star the currently deceased James Brown as Jung.
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What We All Are (with footnotes)
Impostors.
We don't know what we are doing1
so we make our way through the meetings
while waiting to be exposed.
So far, corporate is buying it.
Manson Girls.
Following a loud thug
made of ice, bile, and failed art.2
This, because the saints are only whispering.
The noise in the arena drowns them out.
Immigrants.
Moving in and through places where
no one understands our dialect and we can only
catch a stray word or a phrase in the coffee shop.
We are lonely alone and lonely in crowds.3
Lovers.
I mean you and I are lovers.
Don't turn away!4 They told us our hearts
are where love lives, then they told us
hearts are mere pumps. They were
right the first time.
__________
1 No, you don’t.
2 We all took shots at Gerald Ford.
3 Our skin both beautiful and wrong.
4 If you must, then we’ll turn away together.
Dale Wisely edits Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems and, with Howie Good, online prose poetry chapbooks at White Knuckle Press. He once pitched a musical, Funky Animus, based on the life of Carl Jung which was to star the currently deceased James Brown as Jung.