Poems Are Transcendent

 Poems Are Transcendent
like all art but perhaps more so since the words
come from that other place, so far away
and yet so near. I see us all as floating ghosts
beside our bodies as we move along, our fingers
only barely on the trigger, a wisp of cloud entwining.
It depends on what one reads or talks about of course
but the pulse could take you anywhere
or so many places at once and thus harmony in music
or unharmony, as the case may be. The wisp knows,
I see now, so why make fun of it, or even be too serious,
the wispy cloud reaches the sky, evaporates madly,
or rains back down. It goes in rivulets down inside
the earth and heats up. This is joy,
the Earth magma molten core.

The soul is wispy
and wouldn’t altogether be happy about that
if it had a mouth to frown or smile. But it seems
to infiltrate and tell secrets like dreams in backwards
upside down words. Words that stand alone and fall
over into a heap of cookie crumbs, the sprinkles
standing out in my view colorfully.

There’s an entrance
to a cave and the ghost stands there alone
glowing to themself. It can see inside the handprints.
It can see outside the wide blue sky and the setting sun.
“Further in,” it mutters, “further in!”
The mutters chant across the known universe.
“I’m almost broken” it thinks passively.
“But these are just words.”