[Newspoetry] Read in' Poems

[DL Emerick]

When you read poems,
must it have meaning,
be singularly unplural?

Is that so impossible,
that we never know?

Meaning is nothing,
against what is said,
as to how it moves you,
not trying to ask how,
but just that it does.

Does painting mean?
Or sculpture seem?
Art shrugs at meaning.

You point to it, it
comes unappointed,
in foreign accents,
speaking strangely,
symbolic analogy,
of no life you've lived.

It points to you,
at your knotted navel:
"Have you meaning
to give me, pointlessly,
when I but want a kiss?"