It's Novemebr 15th. My father would have been 57 today.....
Dadaism
First syllable sacrificed inside crib’s wooden prison
Vision strayed by stringed mobile heaven
Tip of tongue slowly combing against my soft palate
Scraping out forged syllables, collections of warbled din
Subconsciously ferried back into the world
“Da-Da.” I squeal, swirled by plucked verbal arpeggios
Stretched lips coated with pockets of pleasurable drool.
“Da da da da da da da da da.” I chant
Amused by my babbled nocturnal pushed out hymn
Voices reverberating against pastel oceans of childhood
Lotus tongue blossoming inside
Oval mouth, dank hovel of infancy burrowing words
At this time in my life have no other particular meaning
Their Alphabetical slants and curves
Sloughed naked, the invisible marrow of language
Oblivious I am ordering the towered form of the Father
To appear in the attic above my vision
Unaware my mantra has any other particular meaning
Than breath loosely attired in the slim bib of sound
This was not suppose to be the first
Cohesive word that slipped out my bubbly orifice
It was suppose to be a request for the maternal scent
An innate longing to plug
The coils of the umbilicus back into my swirled navel
Fasten the bridge inside the fertile maternal goddess
Between whose thighs I slid
A scatter of diced chromosomes late for the harvest
With breadcrumb lips and hirsute beard his shadow
Shields, his limbs coddle
His son-- animal whose limbs have been reaching
Up, into the ceiling, waiting for the scent of Father
To hold him. All this time
Saying his name without knowing what was meant.
Much later in life I optically shuffle over the origin
Of my first jarred rasp
Definition of the supplication for union with Father
Word randomly culled from French-German dictionary
By self-deemed artistic prophets
Constituting a noveau movement whose apparent meaning
Expressed polar opposites of what was initially meant
How I realized this too late in life
How much evil there is in a stick light
How sin can bleed baptism into a wayward vein
Come a fourth-century later
Yang freshly unfurled from the silhouette of Yin
When I found myself overlooking the crib
An embalmed echo of my first sound
A casket grin, never to hear those words again.
David A. Von Behren
-from VITRIFICATION
2003, SIZTA in a SUNDAY DRESS PRESS