The Difference Between Writing and Speaking the Words Out Loud by George Moore

The Difference Between Writing and Speaking the Words Out Loud

by George Moore

Things that wants most to be said
never fits the names we choose for them.

I scale it back to the love hate loss
of grief endured. The languages of clay.

Men of clay. A heavier light filters through
the pines here at dusk. How do you say it?

Nothing performs well before a strange god
missing a heart.

Spoken in many tongues, but they are flesh,
frenulum, noise-anchor, blood vessels,

taste buds. The perfect but sacred text
are the taste buds. Writing

is a silence on the stillness. The surf below
can only be imagined. Rage for order.

As easy as falling down stairs.

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Publications include The Hermits of Dingle (FutureCycle Press, 2013), and a collection coming out this year, Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry, 2014). I’ve published poetry with The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, and a good bit internationally of late. Having taught for decades at the University of Colorado, Boulder, I presently live with my wife on the southern shore of Nova Scotia.