A poem, for Walt Whitman

 I seem, that it may be I write poetry in ways that cannot be defined.

  Or, twisted among my head, weaving in between nerves.

Scraping plaster off the walls and painting light waves on my skin.

I feel you in another world.

Engraved, in order and fashion like Pound thinking of market.

Perhaps it maybe the reason we are blinded up in prose.

Whitman, how did we get like this?

Though it may be peculiar in ways I can not say.

Shut up behind silence, taped mouths, hidden streams of knowledge bound together by prose

What is prose, Whitman?

Can you see me?

Whitman, I am frightened.

Frightened I am.

I have noticed iron on my ankles.

As they were not present before.

I cannot speak without stumbling upon words.

I cannot run without falling.

I cannot see without succor.

I cannot learn without the bible or blank leaves sewn together, waiting for creation to fill.

Can you hear me?

Maybe it’s different in Here?

The place I once called home.

Maybe it’s different in the Room?

The place I called my own.

Maybe it’s different Outside, in a world mirrored behind the leaves.

Behind Frost, trying to shape the road blinded in prose.

And you, O my soul, he had not took.

I too, blinded in prose;

Defined in aged references, saturated in keen, stringent lines.

Stuck together in order and fashion.

Consuming the definition, processed in between nerves.

Scraping plaster off the walls, painting light waves on my skin.

Whitman, can you feel me?

I loaf against the tree that you once stood that’d once held memories written in American silence.

Whitman, where have you gone?

The Youth, where have they gone?

Though I am not sure, I know I am still here.

Whitman, can you teach me?