John Taggart Poems

The horizon of all possibilities
returns as the muffled terror of institutions—
gleaming waxed floors
...

To breathe and stretch one's arms again
to breathe through the mouth to breathe to
breathe through the mouth to utter in
...

Darkened not completely dark let us walk in the darkened field
trees in the field outlined against that which is less dark
under the trees are bushes with orange berries dark green leaves
not poetry’s mixing of yellow light blue sky darker than that
...

Not sweet sixteen not even sweet sixteen and she's moaning
not even sixteen years old and she's moaning
not even sweet sixteen and she's moaning the words
moaning out the words to "Precious Lord"
...

Love enters the body
enters
almost
...

You have to hear the sound before you play the sound.
You have to hear you have to you have to hear to
hear you have to give you have to give ear you
who have you who have ears you who have ears to
...

Fictions of the one you love
("Vertigo")
Not the life dreamt of
but the one found while living it—
...

Whether you can tell from this distance what
the house was before it was
consumed by wildness, by rampant
...

Riverwater rushes downstream whitewater over blackrock, over
ragged rockcleft past lean-to, boulder-slabs on the riverbank—
frenzy of fast water meeting riverrock,
...

And goes is gone
cause for mourning head
in hands in tears gonna be a long long wait for the resurrection
of the dead.
...