Catachresis, and Mandolin in White Wood, Signing the Tag

Catachresis

If the song is dirt, naw wait, say the air is,

and if my tongue is a tad bit boonies, just a tad,

or an outskirts really, though a re-dial might be more

right:—it rings and rings and if there is sumbody there,

she’s busy, I guess:—and if the static noise hushes

suddenly, sumthin’ probably prowls about the woods. And if a twig snaps, cut

down the tree, for that tree is a seed, is:—if pulped:— pages,

is:—if staved and heated and bent:—a mandolina’s bowlback,

and that bulges like soil must do, when beneath it, a shoot

prods up. Is this making a kind of sense? I suppose that prodding

pokes toward me, which makes my gut like sunshine and the song

is blooms. Now, I know the song was where we begun, but

who says any thing can’t become itself? Who? The line is dead.

Mandolin in White Wood, Signing the Tag

When gape-mouthed with the highest   harmonies, even the buttress of your tongue shall sheen. If spittleless,     I dray enough hooch to glisten the frenulum through its setlists   and interluding speeches:—

          a species   of vetch invades and America     eats:—         forage and fodder       more cows, and kids grow brawn:—       when they collide, scree clinks down embankments:—the bleachers wince:—

      give us viruses:— our quilts become immense:—

I do get riled, and to piddle this   whittling a gee-haw stick     is wicked:—

        Ouija:— the way its propeller judders   and reverses. When you can make it     turn, you can turn a mule. Your tongue must muscle up gees.   Open like an inkwell your mouth for haws:—the beast   has its vellum, and you’ve your mark     to inscribe