Nathan Moore

.


Mouth


Let's lose our shirts, toss
jeans in the trees, bare feet
and roll
across the painted path where
footprints are forbidden.

We've waited hours while
management sifts papers. Let's
do each other favors, forgo
permission for our gifts. As
the bosses bark and the pens
hiss, we'll slip quietly out of the

office. Officially reason is crazy.
We know real reason, our mouths
were made for it. That mouth is
power, made to name streets, yell
at locks, bite lips.

Their machine flails in a howling
fit. Let's whisper reasonable things
over it like "food not starvation."
We'll know we've won when
a billion whispers make the
building tip.

We'll trip on freedom. We'll make
a mess. Go ahead, tap the shell.
Press thumbs on both sides of the
fracture and pull. Let the glob of
water and sunlight roll out. Smear
it on your hands, feel it web your
fingers, wet wrists.

Break, be broken, know the swing,
the shielding fist. We'll list the crimes,
label the lies we've heard and
prepare for reaction's rage at the
honest word.



Nathan Moore is a father of three, a poet and a painter. He spent seven years working full time in a photograph factory while getting an undergraduate degree in English literature at Clarion University in Clarion, Pennsylvania, then spent the next six years working on a master's degree and Ph.D. in English at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. In 2000 he found The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and left the academy.






(author retains copyright)