I turn my back on words

by | Nov 6, 2012 | Poetry

Whoever’s good for more than seven words

shouldn’t wholly trust my compliments.

 

A sniper’s bullet outruns its sound,

word of it arrives too late.

 

My words outrun intent, I turn

my back on them and walk away.

 

I sleep among their fallen leaves,

I don’t dream of spring, I dream

 

of lightning bolts and floods

that loosen my grip on earth.

 

I dream of making a poem

of something better than words,

 

something like the betrayal in a tic,

a longing inviolable as an orbit.

 

About The Author

Djelloul Marbrook

Djelloul (jeh-lool) Marbrook was born in 1934 in Algiers to a Bedouin father and an American painter. He grew up in Brooklyn, West Islip and Manhattan, New York, where he graduated from Dwight School and attended Columbia. He then served in the U.S. Navy. Marbrook blogs at www.djelloulmarbrook.com and is the author of two books of poetry (Far from Algiers, Kent State; Brushstrokes and Glances, Deerbrook Editions) and three novellas (Artemisia’s Wolf, Saraceno, and Alice Miller’s Room), with other works forthcoming. A retired newspaper editor, he lives in New York with his wife Marilyn.