Miss Moore

writes
like black lights
    illuminate white shirts. She can take
    the mundane and then make
        her readers hold their heads in palms,

sick. Lingual tricks
    make them nauseous.  Presenting many     facts, it is uncanny         how she keeps her self hidden so   well. One would fail     should they look for the Marianne who,     conscious, not in a fugue,         composed ‘The Fish’ and ‘Poetry’.   Yet, as I sit,     lonely, it’s true, glass of wine at hand,     I try to understand         why I only find the loneli-   ness in the best     of your perfectly concocted words.     “Marianne, have you heard         that all of us forlorn people   are looking far     and wide for someone who justifies     our isolation  by         championing self reliance?”
  And until sands     of pure human contact halt the gears      that crank out lonely years,         my lonesome mind won’t be deterred   from the question,     “Marianne, wherever you may be,     were you ever lonely?

        Did this restraint ever fail you?”

 

11/01