Time is a Toy: The Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt

Definitive Things

75 definitive things No, no, they are never the same as their names Nobody ever fits into his own definition Who is it regards definitions definitively? Least of all objects, yes, even those poor helpless things Knife, you are a butterfly whose wings have been pinned Pin, you are a knife whose butterfly has been removed And the sky, which does not agree to stand up when somebody calls upon it The sky, too, has its windows See, then, how the word window grows troubled, it too closely resembles the word widow, and that’s depressing I have just said the word alley twenty times and find I have forgotten what it means: alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley, alley—this blank look on our faces is actually a bright beginning Next is next; I always forgot the meaning of the word next, even the first time I heard it Madge, pass me the lung. The lung? That sounds too funny to depend on to breathe with! Other words are too short or too long. Pain seems too abbreviated while cling is almost always too short And if love contains within it an appropriate little heart in its v The problem with death is that it’s too close to breath Food equals fried only if you don’t happen to be on a diet Bundle, hunch, flaunt, corpse, lapse, kiss, fiddle, pelt, consume, erode, erotic, remake, tape, eyelash Are 7 one-syllable words and 7 two-syllable words I like I like all 3 and 4 syllable words for their more complex symmetry Regarding the names of people, I would like to refer you to my poem, “Naming the Baby,” suffice it to say here Like a hand that does not quite fit a glove An eye and a contact lens, expectations and the world Our definitions and meanings never quite overlap Help help I’m falling off the edge of this page ...