I like my own poems

best.

I quote from them

from time to time

saying, “A poet once said,”

and then follow up

with a line or two

from one of my own poems

appropriate to the event.

How those lines sing!

All that wisdom and beauty!

Why it tickles my ass

off its spine.

“Why those lines are mine!”

I say

and Jesus, what a bang

I get out of it.

I like the ideas in them,

my poems,

ideas that hit home.

They speak to me.

I mean, I understand

what the hell

the damn poet’s

talking about.

“Why I’ve been there,

the same thing,” I shout,

and Christ! What a shot it is,

a shot.

And hey,

The words!

Whew!

I can hardly stand it.

Words sure do not fail

this guy, I say.

From some world

only he knows

he bangs the bong,

but I can feel it

in the wood,

in the wood of the word,

rising to its form

in the world.

“Now, you gotta be good

to do that!” I say

and damn! It just shakes

my heart,

you know?

Jack Grapes is a poet, playwright, and actor and edits the literary journal ONTHEBUS. He is also a well-known teacher of poetry in the Los Angeles area who has won several publishing grants and Fellowships in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts and who has received several Artist-in-Residence Grants from the California Arts Council. His play Circle of Will recently ran in the Los Angeles area with Grapes starring as Will Shakespeare. His work has been characterized as “operating somewhere in the middle ground between pop culture and philosophy.” “I Like My Own Poems” is from Trees, Coffee, and the Eyes of Deer, published by Bombshelter Press and reprinted by permission.