revisio

hours and hours into it
eyeballs screwed in their sockets
drilling those lines
down to their finest word dust
participles and particulars
alliteration and slam
banging in the back seat of
the bookmobile
structured poetry sweating
out our backs and legs

punctuation or not?
singular or plural?
first or third person?
that or this? in or on?
on and on, point after point
finessing words into weapons or
love handles
gripping the poem
by its horns
wrangling it
into this form I’ve arbitrarily chosen
sonnet or villanelle, haiku or triad

and I’m pumping the lines like a fireman
beating at them like a blacksmith
I’ve twisted them and
bent them all out of shape
structure and form are out the window
and still
these words —
they will only spell you.