Ars Poetica with Backup from The Clark Sisters
after “Is My Living in Vain?”, 1980
There is always music to be written.
After all, life is the sweat of Twinkie Clark,
the product of music, the skilled control
of your organ despite the kinesis of memory.
Like an X-ray, an audience will always focus
on the white center. The barrier between
a bee and its honey stomach.
Somewhere between allergy, elegy.
Somewhere between cascade, casket,
yet I live, the middle ground of gospel
and gossip, wiping off sweat, smearing a kiss.
My mother pronounces killed and kilt
the same way between wiping off sweat
and smearing a kiss. You can be put
in the ground for what comes out
your mouth. Today I searched under the pews
of my life for loose change. Tell me, congregation,
did you give with the fullness
or the foolness of your heart?
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