I Am Sorry My Poems Make Sense

in admiration of Mary Szybist

I am sorry my poems make sense. I know it is wrong.
I can't help myself. I want as much as you
to suck the underlip of meaning into my mouth
to feel its tilt and tremble, to feel it follow
into ecstasies, into a wrenched and rendered sky.
But the ghosts will have their way. I feel
their delicate tongues in my ear. They put meanings there
like little eggs, and they grow huge in my head,
and then they come out in my poems, intolerably
distended. There's no help for it. But skance
your head -- be a crow and speculate a blowing bag --
and the meanings will tumble right back out again.
What's left might be a poem. We can hope.