Welcome to poetryvlog.com
A weekly video reading of poetry by the poet.
Finishing a Poem
by Tony Policano
Finishing a poem, I mean finally finishing a poem is a feeling of freedom
so hard to define;
finishing a poem is like having a song from your childhood sung to you by the summer wind
as you sit Allen Ginsberg naked on your front lawn sipping lemonade, eating Jersey cherries
spitting pits across eternity – waiting for the next big thing to hit.
It’s a night on the town, it’s Dorothy Lamoure wearing a sarong in a Fifties Tiki bar
it’s Bob Hope shaking your whisky sour, Bing Crosby singing
“Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day” as per your request
Finishing a poem is like having invented astronaut magnetic anti-gravity shoes
it’s bouncing on a trampoline on a Queens apartment rooftop at dusk
it’s playing touch football with neighborhood friends in the street
having your grandfather with one artificial leg quarterback your team
it’s catching a Hail Mary with one hand leaping into the blacktop end zone
It’s contemplative, like an October full moon glowing
like a nubile woman in the sky
or floating like a white olive in an ink blue martini
or dissolving like an Alka-Seltzer before your eyes
Finishing a poem is like starting a family,
buying a family station wagon with wood trim and chrome,
it’s leaving on a vacation, hitting the road like Kerouac only cleaner
with kids and dogs yelping in the back
it’s selling your home, it’s heading west arm in arm with Charles Chaplin
until you both become silhouettes walking into the sunset looking
for who it is you have every right to be
Finishing a poem is like breaking eggs on Halloween
breaking eggs into a hot bacon-greased pan
it’s like breaking the chicken and egg conundrum wide open
like breaking the DNA code of your most private dreams
It’s unbreaking every defective promise your holding
undrinkng raw egg yolks from the shell
unthinking every negative thought that ever knocked on a positive door
So crucial for the health and welfare of your next poem, finishing a poem
is a metaphor-motorboat waterskiing on the finger lakes of your identity
even more so the more poems you write
It’s like fresh graffiti on a building wall that just had years of graffiti whitewashed
like spray painting a moustache on Madonna or a turban on George Bush’s head.
It’s like the fastball down the middle the crack of the bat two outs full count bases loaded
bottom of the ninth go ahead run at the plate – it’s You – it’s the muted sound of success
watching the center fielder run to the wall looking over his shoulder - distressed
Finishing a poem is a prize fighter’s stomach full of steak, oysters and champagne
it’s forgetting about training for a day or a lifetime
it’s the alcohol rub down and the Epson salt bath
it’s the butterflies turned to ravenous lions in the iron cage of his gut
it’s the aftermath of the hurricane
Finishing a poem is like having the skeletons in your closet dance the Macarena in
plaid shirts and slippers, it’s like having the GHOSTS of your deepest fears appear
before you in the air crying out loud;
“Don’t you Get It? I Don’t Exist Anymore!”
Finishing a poem is like Martin Luther King Jr. speaking into a microphone
to the conscientious masses on the Lincoln Memorial steps
his honey rockslide voice calling “Free At Last. Free At Last.
Thank God Almighty, I’m Free At Last.”
Finishing a poem is like watching Mohammed Ali float like a butterfly from the corner of
your TV, watching the morning glory of his face biting hard his teeth-guard, watching the
bee of his sting bounce off the ring ropes just as flashbulbs explode in triumph;
Ali ringing the bell at the end of each round of courage - exhibited by any man,
exhibited by me, finishing a poem and staring eye to eye at my own destiny
and liking what I see.
Tony Policano Nov-2006
Copyright ©2006. Poetryvlog.com. All rights reserved.