Tuesday, October 11, 2011

being verbs



In my copy of Hanif Kureishi's "The Buddha of Suburbia" there is a poem hand-printed lovingly on the back of the sleeve cover, which I am grateful to have in my possession, 14 years after it was originally written. Its a beautiful poem and should be shared. I am happy to have been given the permission to share it (Thank you, Dan! Still one of my favorite birthday gifts!):


My girlfriend is a shifting body of text
She moves, fluid adjectival flow
an endless configuration of consonant and vowel
a poem of her no page can hold

(I fear I am not her perfect reader)

but her transitions of rhyme and rhythm
act upon me
at a touch from her I become italics
a touch from her I cease to be a noun
We forget the present tense, the past imperfect

We become verbs.
Immersed in the act of being
the act of being us
the act of being with


Our love lies between us
encapsulated in the parenthesis of our bodies.

--Daniel Lee Cox

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