what's comprehensibility got to do with it anyway?

If hauntingly exquisite prose side-steps comprehension, dances on the table of confusion, whispers seductively delicious diction strung on jumbled pegs of syntax that echo without meaning through the tunnels of the mind, well then, what does comprehensibility have to do with it anyway. We shall nail such quotidian norms, demands that we 'understand', to the crucifix of wild, harsh beauty that a text ought to be. Death to the subject, the intent. Soul spring forth.

parentheses

Some philosophies fuel a belief in the self,
constructed to keep one's goods on one's own shelf.
Built well you're a strong letter I,
with the feet on the ground and the head to the sky.
Now and then you can bend,
it's okay to lean over my way.
You fear that you can't do it all,
and you're right.
Even diligent day takes relief every day
from its work making light from the night.

And when you're holding me
we make a pair of parentheses.
There's plenty space to encase
whatever weird way my mind goes,
I know I’ll be safe in these arms.

If something in the deli aisle makes you cry
you know I’ll put my arm around you
and I’ll walk you outside,
through the sliding doors,
why would I mind?

You're not a baby if you feel the world.
All of the babies can feel the world. That's why they cry.