Some poems are not meant for the page.
They are meant for cups and bowls.
They are meant to be poured out
onto the floor or dashed off the bedside table
by rampant elbows.
They are made for splattering,
for long rivulets dripping down the walls
like watercolors or alcohols
or to be drunk, to get drunk upon
and stumble, tipsy and blurry-eyed,
slurring out through the lips
and encouraging bad decisions.
They are poems meant to taste
like paint: pigmented and thick,
or watery and slick thin,
but poems that recolor you
from the inside out, just the same.
They are poems like slurry and mud, meant
to hold footprints, meant to be tracked through
and ruin your mother’s just-cleaned linoleum,
poems that can be followed by
those who come in your wake.
