Gravity Defying

I keep throwing books out of windows.

‘Poetry should defy gravity!’

I proclaim to my audience of gravel,

tarmac, houses, trees, 

sky, birdsong, and rain.

But so far, the books are not defying gravity.

Frank O’Hara’s Selected Poems

lands with a small thud; a sort of sub-thud.

‘And I had such high hopes for them,’

I say to a parked car.

All poets are Mad Emperors,

issuing their unreasonable decrees about reality.

The words we use have no sentience,

even when we put them with other words;

even when we read them.

They form lines,

and mine are increasingly disorderly.

‘An if bicycle under because another of cannot whom.’

Syntax and semantics seem to have stepped on a landmine.

Clumsy.

What might these words say to each other?

‘Hello, my name is bicycle. My purpose is unclear.

Am I supposed to be doing wheelies or something?’

But if is delighted.

‘I’ve become an adjective! I’ve become an adjective!’

The enthusiasm of if the adjective is catching

and I find myself intrigued by the notion.

What is an if bicycle?

How about an if tree? An if sky?

Maybe this is an if poem?

An idea occurs.

I type the poem up, make a couple of edits,

and print it.

Opening a window,

I release the poem to see if it defies gravity.

For a second,

it shoots sideways then up –

at last, a gravity-defying if poem! –

before… disappointment:

it clumsily descends, finally landing on wet tarmac.

Perhaps, I consider, the only way for a poem

to defy gravity

is for it never to be written.

I look out of the window again

and contemplate an if world.