On Form

Speech

Speech

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow poets,

I humbly invite you to speak.

Say these words aloud, as you read. Try it out.

It need not be a performance. Call it practice.

Whatever suits you best.

Be precise; enunciate, but above all

Take pleasure in the sound of your voice.

Revel in the roundness of arrs,

Savour the sibilant hiss of esses

Whistling betwixt your teeth. Tees:

Tap the tip of the tongue on the palate.

You are, after all, an artist;

Mix these sounds for your canvas,

Blend them subtly together, or let them bleed and run

Into one another, slurred

like blurry memories of drunken nights.

I advise you, beseech you, counsel you:

Do this with your own work. As you write,

Give your designs a tongue, and lips,

And teeth. Shake your throat with words. Recite.

That poetry exists in spoken form is too easily forgotten,

And reading to oneself is a hard-afforded treasure,

But before the first tree was felled for paper

There were fireside storytellers,

Oral traditions breathed

From mouth to mouth,

Flickering and changing

But still alight.