R.J. Keeler
Meaning Has No Matter Outside of Sound
After The Emperor of Ice-Cream
—Wallace Stevens
Strike out sequential consonants,
Waste lorn fricatives, and permit them swage
Any remainders through rusted radiators.
Let heroics meld in solemn somnambulance
As cause for epitaphs written in Esperanto
And pegged to next year’s purposeless sins.
Let metadiscourse and disfluencies abound.
Meaning has no matter outside of sound.
Lay onto the parchment of peaches,
Dense by arrhythmic inclines, those words
Troubling for ears in refuse to connect,
And conspire them to mock epics of size.
If their pseudonyms obtrude, the better
To hide warrior from clown, and forbore.
Let the autotelic message dumbfound.
Meaning has no matter outside of sound.
R.J. Keeler was born St. Paul, Minnesota. He lived in the jungles of Colombia, S.A., up to age twelve. He holds a BS Mathematics from NCSU, an MS Computer Science from UNC, an MBA from UCLA, and a Certificate in Poetry from UW. HE is an Honorman, U.S. Naval Submarine School, and “SS” (Submarine Service) qualified. He was awarded a Vietnam Service Medal, Honorable Discharge. He has received a Whiting Foundation Experimental Grant, and is part of P&W’s Directory of Poets and Writers. He has been published in Ploughshares, VMI Beachcomber, Oak Literay Magazine, Typishly, and Deluge Literary and Arts Journal, among others. R.J. Does not subscribe to the cattle-prod paradigm of poetry. He may tend to melancholy, and believes Humor trumps everything. His collection “Detonation” will be published in December.
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