A Thank You Cleave by Dennis Kelly

Dear Phuoc-Tan,

*

Well, well—thank you very much.

For posting “The Pact”—on The Cleave.

“The Pact” pretty much—says everything.

Everything I know—about The Cleave right now.

Which isn’t much—I keep it minimal.

I keep the baggage light—I let the Spice flow.

*

I want to let your—Cleave idea “gel” in my mind.

To give it time—to do what it wants to do.

It always seems—to surprise me.

With something Spontaneous—and NEW.

That’s what Pound said—“Make it NEW, baby.”

*

Making it NEW is easy—if you trust your Intuition.

It’s best in the morning—with a cup of coffee.

With a cat on my lap—and my Fujitsu tablet.

Glowing in the dark—in my bedroom womb.

With the Cleave-stream—flowing thru me.

Thru my sleepy—wake-up cerebellum…

*

I’ve made this Pact with Pound—like Pound & Whitman.

The New Sentence in my head—the New Line on the screen.

Sometimes the stylus—can’t wait to get going.

The graceful horizontal slide—of words left to right.

Cleaving it with hyphens—letting the diastic flow go free.

Then the best part—letting the Cleave speak to me…

*

Letting the 2 verticals—crawl up and down the page.

Like cicadas climbing—up the World Tree

Three Voices talking to me—the Spoken Word inside me.

Saving it on a memory stick—plugging it in later.

Editing the manuscript—on my Roll-top desk laptop.

Each morning—I make this Pact with the Word.

And the Word—says Cleave Me Baby!!!!!

*

The Pact by Dennis Kelly

“I make a pact with

you, Walt Whitman”

—Ezra Pound

i make a pact—with you

ezra pound—my fascist father

bollingen prize—badboy poet

pig-headed—pisa prick

st. elizabeth—prisoner of zenda

poet—of the new woode

you broke it—that whitman Line

now it’s—time for cleaving

once—again

time for—commerce

words—between us

—based on Ezra Pound’s “A Pact,” Personae (1926)