Who stays close to skyscrapers?
A digital bureaucracy
won’t look at my poetry.
I don’t know what it means.
Man’s critical college parallel universe was
thrown into poetry.
I don’t think no one reads him,
even though it was a parallel universe.
Did I just say that?
You like mules
that have no meaning behind them
when they’re pullin’ a plough.
You don’t like to figure out stuff.
I don’t think you like meaning.
It’s read it’s bread.
Stop and take a look no way.

How do we bring down poetry into the universe?
My God the spheres here.
I can make up a poem to please yah.
See Dick run after Jane?
Okay get out of the knob Joe.
Meaning is paradise.
It’s not your guttural wear.
The random nonsense of meaning words,
did I just say paradise?

I’m at a loss for words.
Nobody understands me.
Critical Hank,
is that self-meaning or self-pity?
What do you see in an enemy?
A reader.
I’m all out of poems,
and they just comin’.
I’m really not doin’ this.
Poetry has grabbed my testicles and is squeezing them.
In silence no one can hear you scream.

That’s what my mind dirts,
when poetry comes in my window.
I’m liftin’ silence to read it.
It gets you all trashed
in dirt modules,
the mind’s interference,
and unfortunately the more trashed the more you like it.
I hear the mind there
all readable by rationality.
The mind likes symmetry.

I put a poem in pieces
where silence holds my poem.
I’m tryin’ to say this pure verse,
really, really from the silence,
unadulterated
by anything mind can give.
Do you see me there?
I’m listenin’ hard.
Like I say I come in pieces.

How do you value a poem?
It’s meaningful to you.
I don’t think you’re concerned with the silence.
The root of poetry has no meaning
to someone who looks at stuff all the time.
Pure abstractness’s not what I’m talkin’ about.
If you let it happen,
meaning would come in time
personal to you.
It would hit you on the nose
a vehicle trip.
I can't get at this abstraction.
Well can you let poetry breathe,
take off your thinking cap a moment?

You’re gonna be taken for a ride kid
in the hit you of your stuff,
in the node of your surround things.
Poetry will take you somewhere
out of yourself
in the larger spheres.
It has meaning
all wrapped up in purpose,
and we clear here.
Poetry is a vehicle of meaning
that will look at you in your underwear.
Are you desnudo?
Wow, amazing,
can you come read your poetry?

Can we understand your poetry together with silence?
I think the reader’s talking to me again.
Okay let’s say some hard words.
I’m a stallion in Paris.
When I look through my radar I see you.
I’ve opened my first book.
It’s just terrible.
It’s just terrible.
We can reader handle a book,
shall we?

You pronounce it better,
that publication.
They say I’m crazy.
And a book shall lead them,
trusting you.
You’re open.
You can definitely see the Sun.
Get out of the way,
and it will rain down upon us
how to do poetry,
be happy with what you make in a better way.

Tall recognition
of you’ve got some answers,
the answer,
despite failure.
I put failure in.
You got the Sun in your eyes.
You can check and see if it’s there.
Read this one.
You’re having a beautiful Yahtzee surprise.
Sit Sharma you have done.

A poet has his word out.
Shoulder gets a new test.
Oh, this is getting down to me,
the purport of poetry:
be meaning and don’t expect anything in return.
I think we just said the universe.

How do we do that,
get we and put it in a higher position?
Yeah, okay, struggle to survive.
Why am I gaslighting this?
I broke through the crowd and I silenced the sound.
They wondered if I was to blame
for Mary. [This two above lines heard sung by Bob Ayala, “The Song of Joseph”]
Into the divine,
can I take you?
There’s no struggling with,
there’s no struggling with another person.

Goddamn dude,
it was nothing but
I wonder why the U. S. has so many problems controllin’ that track right there. [line spoken at the end of a dream, a question I asked, a Green Beret in the dream, seeing a heavily armed train belonging to the Taliban insurgents, the track being representative of the field of Afghanistan while the U. S. was still there]
Hey come here—
wastin’ time. [heard sung by Dobie Gray, “Drift Away”]
Just don’t bombard me okay?
Go and see that
as a blockbuster. [vision of having gone to the ocean floor to see the wreck of the Titanic]
Harry Potter,
you’re tryin’ to swim
unlimited.
We’ll be right back.
That must be the phone.

Now bring meaning down to time.
I’m every bit in your skyscraper.
Bring me down-to-earth, will yah?
Get me outta here,
a lonely meaning in time.
I’m all about your reveille post.
Open up to the meanings you have missed.
I’m only there.

I should explain that this poem was posted for just a few moments on Oct. 26, 2022 and then reverted to draft so to submit to Poetry Magazine, and it took eight months for them to reply. Here is their email in regards to this poem, dated May 18, 2023:

Dear Donny Duke,

Thank you for sending your work to POETRY magazine—and thank you, too, for your patience as you waited for our response.

We won’t be publishing anything from your submission, but we wish you the best of luck in publishing it elsewhere and appreciate you sending it our way.

Thanks so much for your support of the magazine. We hope you are as safe and well as can be.

Gratefully,

The Editors