Words and I

Adjectives are us, getting personal,

gaffs to hook the fin-dark, darting glint of things

and haul it on deck flipping, or dead.

Adjectives are where we take our eyes, our tingling skin,

our cores, fuck-hungry and mean, and turn them on nouns.

Make no mistake that adjectives are desperate things.

Take Homer, the maker of our word.

His Achaeans, from the first book to the last,

are euknemides, well-greaved, thirty one times in all.

Their greaves hold fast in their full bellowed strength,

fixed firm when the men are lounging round the camp,

and their greaves stay shining on when their mouths taste dirt

and Trojan chariots roll over and snap their shins.

Even as some whirling hero plucks their bodies clean,

these Greeks’ greaves are well.

Perhaps someone took comfort to hear it so.

Perhaps, when I stop writing to see in the window

this stone dead city, and think How oppressive it can be!

as the bright blue gushing sounds of countryside come running,

I too should pause, and rethink the relationship between

these adjectives and me, untie them, let them wander

off to a void of air, or fling them like confetti in the wind

to settle with what nouns they please.