The Poetry Project

Three Poems

Ian Dreiblatt

which animal would you rather be

listen say what you want about

my scruples vis-a-vis hostage-

taking embattled sense of tone

color melody inability to navigate

a suburban noodle menu inexplicable

indebtedness to the lyric

soprano but the record will

show i can still wreck

a bbq

the teeth that were metal in

your mouth become stones

in my belly

there are as we know five

kinds of metaphor: the

small star that falls onto

the roof. the giant wing

that holds off invaders.

distances braised in

seawater. robocop. the

turning of the seasons.

what once I said deliberatively,

melismatically, in the long

enfolding skirt of cyclical

time, I now say with the

clipped astonishment of

a newly drafted chaplain.

o lift him up that’s all.

circuit gleams like bad

............................................ advice

I’m so ashamed that I

lived in a world of

salt and suddenly after

all these years just

finally managed to hack

the spectral authority of

our thirst

as if to say awakened in or

only knew the gifts of, but

a displacement, sapling

liturgy well something to

walk thru with a colander

on your head and a matrix

of unreconstructed varmint

tailing you thru non-euclidean

battlefields

out beyond the crazed

wall we found and lived

in a level of comfort

that had a certain

undefinable militancy

about it

the truth about complicity!

“green means go / red means go” — Despot

woke up this morning looking

everywhere for the dialectic

har .. har .. har .. we splash thru

the spilled vinegar of history

no big thing life is one of the

grossest experiences you can

have but we press on with

it

... organized revolt armed

insurrection flight to the

forest

............... just reach into our

grab-bag of affects and pull

out… centrifugal grief!

poignant certainty! the glib

cheer of say carwashes or

the super mario movie all

we’re really saying here is

we must attend to the

dynamics

........................ rejection of

ill treatment an innate

quest for freedom crisis

in the economic system

and its political impli

cations

.................. donkey kong

slowly shakes his

head and throws an

invisible barrel at

lines of continuity

yet to be established

*

I have made a point of

being easily persuaded

like a paladin in comely woods

except the plants in the woods

are really just a metaphor for

anyone’s weird way of saying

things becoming official

language, neon power of its

coming from before &

............................................................ through

us

...... the paladin is the thought

that you think you think you

are thinking or just the whole

infinity of being even a millipede

empire has scattered syllables

and aspect markers across

the immense sphere of things,

sphere of immensities, immanent

spherical o oblate ceremoidal

petronium klompus

fax machine screech forgive

me or how capture the

disjunture

while I wrote this an old person

asked me slowly if I knew why

the flags were low, I said no &

she walked away slowly saying

maybe because everything is

so terrible

#279 – Winter 2025

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