wake up, rod

So sick in sebaceous seersucker I stand before your ye: PRONOUNCE an unsimple judgment: BLOW your funnel through my whiskers & I will make a snowman outta your skin flakes with skim milk, watch me construct a monument to your moment, watch the long hard hit to center field, then drop, inches behind the absolut billboard which sparkles in glitter from the tears you shed underneath your desk as you heard that one song play on the radio that one time with the thing & the place, while you sip the suds off your bud-- I’m implanting crystalline bodies in your iris sheaf, son Adapted for sucking I scream at the base of your lip, small persuasive & removable only with proper ecologically friendly cleaning products you haven’t even heard of yet. Fill me proper with names you name, I’ll fuck with your sexual rivalry, I’ll find a house you didn’t know you wanted to live in, hostess you with cute cakes & puffballs & bioluminescent pixie sticks. Pubi...

Bbrrrrap! (the force is strong in others) I don’t shake, I detonate. See I can pile up words like casings in a bullet factory. See I can twist your ear with a swish of jawbone. A cotillion of lashing. An affront of debutantes. I don’t give a fuck, I keep them all for myself. I break it smooth: the force is strong in others, the mysteries beat firm in the breasts of any John, but Tenderheels I will workmanlike my way into your softest tissues, will pound the raw meat of your feet into crunked trochees, shatter this tartare tertiary terroir until it speaks in the voice of all joyous aberrants! Bbrrrrap! goes the bass-loud glade! Bbrrrrap! goes the drumbomb in your heartspace! strongarm the yellowpages if you want that fancy stacking, here is just the sound of explosions and sega chimes ringing brash in the long dark. pray only so your knees get hard enough to get down. write only so the pens get stabbier – see the bloodshed we dream with graph paper! Bbrrrrap! I detonate! Bbrrrrap! I...

Hi, I've had an assignment bubbling for a while, and Kate's poem jump-started my interest in it, specifically the "the whole god-damning summer / squall of me." For lack of a better word, all four of us, and many others I know, do this type of poem occasionally that I'm going to call the Declarative poem. A statement of some power that creates agency and urgency in the self of the speaker's persona. A toast, a boast, a demonstration of will and skill, a this is what I can do, a bring it. The you-can't-imagine-my-___ness. I think these types of poems are extremely exciting to both read and write. But I'm fascinated by the reason for it, the execution of it, and the efficacy of it. I know that all four of us write them - we all interpret it differently, but it's a tactic we use. So this is a two parter. Write one. Then explain it. You can talk about the specific poem, the greater "category" of the "declarative," or how stupid you ...