The Abyss Of The Poem.... Poem by John Tansey

With hand unsteady,
I stop
at the first line’s edge of a jagged poem,
looking down
its precipice.

My foot slips,
over the period’s pause
the grim rim of its ledge,

And without hesitance,
like a dangling participle,
inhaling a breath,
I grab a vowel,
and a bird,

Tie a rock to my foot,
growl
and in an arc, discarding all I know
leap from the cliff.

Measuring madness by meter,

I plumb the vacuous page
crashing ruled lines
and fine edges,

In cursive circles
of tear-splattered rage,

To where I land,
Once, having hit bottom,
seeing the skin pared,
and the soul,
splayed open,

In the uneasy silence at the end
of the poem’s reading,

Flirting with its fear, the crowd
shift in their chairs, coughing,
their pensive eyes dart
like cows before the slaughter.

Then, amid the applause,
I dance, like shiva, before the flames
And amid a crowd of upheld hands,
I enter the abyss that draws us here,
sitting around

This axial loneliness the world turns upon.