20150914 (exegesis)

Time to tell the truth dear reader

It ain’t poetry it ain’t prose

Above all it ain’t prose poetry 

Which I liken to what Dorothy Parker

Said of historical novels I’d rather 

They wrote history or wrote novels

Or went out and sold nylons Ms Parker

Dear I haven’t the retailer’s flair so

It seems you’ll just have to bear

This mash up of words that I do if 

You’re up there somewhere still 

Critiquing young writers 

Sorry so much if I bothered 

Your pondering things eternal

To cite you as a sterner muse than my

Beatrix who so often is plainly 

All-accepting who loves without limit

Wisely well fanning the flame

If ever it threatens to fail but as I was 

Trying to tell my readers what’s happening

Here is more like therapy for me not

For them though I hope they follow

Along and benefit wherever they may

My Freud’s off in the background

Hopefully awake through these sessions

While I on his couch have these spoken

Memory fits flitting about from one 

Thing to another justifiably I’ll let

You figure out it’s not that I don’t

Like punctuation but it gets in the way

When sometimes the end of one sentence

Blurs into a great beginning for another

I propose the confusion’s enlightening

Maybe only to me since I have an inkling

How I love that word the suggestion that

The wetness on the point of a pen my quill

The iMac partly decides what 

My thought might be free association

As a policy I favor it like in the first

Amendment did you see that I took

A term from psychology and bent it over

Like that into political commentary

Ya gotta be careful how you read it

But as Billy Collins said don’t tie

It to a chair bloody it with a rubber

Hose the tortured interrogators tell

Will say whatever gets you to stop

Whereas if you befriend the words

They’ll eagerly talk reveal all

They want to be heard so speak

If you must these old gray words

Till they tell you all they can

Don’t go too deep if it isn’t suggested

It’s probably not there as for what

I call it may not matter no one may

Take it seriously enough in the end

I call it cadenced narrative 

That’s why you’ve just gotta

Speak it so go in a room by yourself

Always take yourself for company

On these ventures read them aloud

If it doesn’t sound right read it again

But don’t knock yourself out

Could be I blew it

c. J.S.Manista, 2015