1.

"The problem is that even the best metaphysical poem can't escape the fact that it doesn't need the image. They are all the same in the eyes of that philosophic poet as he abuses the experiences of my life."

By the steam with which you might say forcing.
Every urge is terrifying; to paraphrase and project
from the beginning to the end of history;
vectored narrative, tempting teleology;
morality pinned aesthetically
in the free play of imagination and understanding.
The 'good' now frustrates conceptually,
no expectation for resolution:
a whirlpool before the absolute city.
By 'steam' I meant the impotent spit of motivation.

2.

"The metaphysical poet must always decide whether to get the philosophy right or to write a good poem."

This must be some unpreferred stone.
I am so sick of deciding on the right jeans.
I love myself in new jeans.
But no one has ever worried about this shard of chirt.
Unfortunately, this pebble 'isn't much of a whole,'
crumbles under obsessive riparian drill.
The choice of the unchosen splits.
To say a word is to accept its rhyme, the first drink.
Which fleck to catch before it
goes with the desk or matches your eyes.

3.

"It's not so much that I have a philosophical problem with writing philosophy as poems; rather, it gives me a poetic agitation as it desiccates existence into the cringeworthy."

With the law
within,
but then the philosopher
          is the economist of the self,
attempting to fuse injunction's source and speaker,
incentivizing the good; roiling model, my wit.
The production of a wing, grounded,
          unfolds
                     to provide an hour
                     is to bracket a negotiation with the soul.

4.

"There are no young philosophers. A poet must be an adolescent, not a day over, mathematician of the soul."

Living inside the rope, to unravel the noose
strip belief. It's neither the executioner,
the economy, history, nor politics,
but rather the knife itself, the choice of knives,
the expense of blades,
the decision of bricks, upward, concentric
machines for living savagely, within:
splitting poverty from the man, divorcing
his wife, sending her to the other coast.
To relieve abject, generate subject, makes his own…

5.

"Restating your philosophical position in poetry is still not a conversation. You keep talking at me, through me, over my head."

Weak debt reruns. Can't keep my eyes open for Rohmer, for Hamlet.
Eject and descend. After philosophy
my art hours are often wasted
                                middling myself out.
Guilty, I often rent the next season, seeking expansion
                     (is nice, but why? but torture?
           expanded to torture?).
Activities pinned to their critiques. TV blares as 'rot' immediately follows.
And if there is no way of saying it is better?
Listening to Bach would be better. The argument is unnecessary.
We should be forced to justify the expense of arguing for the obvious.

6.

"Poetry may deceive and be useless, however, it must be viewed as proto-instrumental, that is, it allows for instrumental action to occur at all."

Few words penetrate. The authority to write this.
To say nothing you say matters.
Music will rudely alter every action.
           One stain is the worst,
my porcelain scratch.
After every (tarnish) (mistake)
           with a little more wear
I will be myself again. I will never need a band that much,
again, a pleasure later, speech that moves.
Comes in contact. Push possibility connecting hope and confusion.

7.

"What poetry offers is possibility. Possibility must always be seen as positive, because it implies a wonderful (beautiful, positive,…) future. Poetry opens up concepts while philosophy attempts to close them."

As water escapes the forceful paddle
I evade my vocation; its lunch, various,
to haunt. Inevitable nourishment,
I always choose the sushi that I didn't bring.
In slow eddies a single action sets up shop,
hammers habituation to the wall
until gravity bends that nail;
useless in its own pattern, dispensed orbit.
A family's frame falls and we move.
Singular possessions finally arrest the wheels.

8.

"At least the poet is not deluded into thinking that he has words, or can coin neologisms, for every possible emotion and experience."

As if the correct number of candles
could tell me what was to come.
A train laconically prods runners to force in front
or be jeered by sweaty companions.
Like prickly almost falling, blown out,
held back by another year of decisions.
As much as we obey tradition, even counting,
sight wanders beyond the faintest trace of smoke:
the perfect life, the perfect poem, the perfect fry.

9.

"Even if there are philosophers what they say is usually either boring or wrong."

A victorious CD shuffle. Ambitiously anxious
                     to know what I will require later.
To take up another bird in the hand, fine text with which to rearrange feathers.
I've kept them in jars and have said, lied, that the water below is brewing,
but I can't move on until I find a song that I haven't heard,
can't possibly have heard, a new song,
impossible to predict what will bring joy is so fickle in the eye.
Rules lay limp over the horizon, unseen,
extending strangely unpredictable, genius frustrated.
There is no ultimate set list, no concept, it falls back on the subject undecided.

10.

"What kind of hat does the poet rip? What is it like for a poet to have sex with a philosopher? What is it like to watch the sex of the poet and the philosopher? Can the poet work in a crowd? Can the philosopher?"

                                 Appreciation is not the same as understanding,
she says, lording her vastly superior interpretation over your smile.
                      Pulls apart critic's criteria,
Isn't he supposed to enjoy that last gulp of movie?
           Motivation to education, shift, critical tastes follow,
prejudices removed from criticisms if not from perception.
                                            Aiming my own art hours,
                                                       Pierce
                                 Rip through to the demand for agreement amounts to
                      The demand for an aesthetic community.

11.

"Look, poetry is fragile, impossibly so. Philosophy will rip it to shreds in order to defend it. Philosophers will trash the subjectivity of aesthetic judgments to save face, to save our face."

You think it melts and warms. Black slush, my dumb cocktail.
Freeze again, I can see yesterday's path, but it doesn't offer what it's supposed to,
What I need it to. No altered should. These new boots are not waterproof.
Receipt claimed otherwise. I must go home. Wet socks. Must.
To feel a need always becomes to need in someone's vitamin addled brain.
To gnaw on a block of parmesan is to require sodium or calcium
Or do we really need what our desires connote?
Italy, risotto, carbohydrates. And so grating
                      And not getting what we require
We keep to the floor sniffing for entailments.

12.

"This must be the paradox of the poetic: it is impossible to describe its nature except through metaphor. This is the true effect of the poetic, that it fully describes the nature of language's foundation."

           We see us as already believed.
Fully. A behavior already notes.
                      To read right off the…
           The formally dressed graduate student
Holds a wet pea-coat far from his body,
                                            For fear that…
It's not as if you could choose the raw.
Every inclination is artfully steamed.
                                 Every painting has been landed on by critical flags, claimed:
           Swimming, I find a mystery in a poem I thought was a problem, solved.