IF
IF
by Randall Nicholas
If you can throw up in my face
and watch your exquisite vomit
settle into my expression
wearing the indifference it does now,
if you can pull your underpants
you wore today over my head
and experience my inhalation
of its delicate perfume as though
taking my next breath of air,
if you can hit me in the head
with the backside of a spade
and hear it resonate
with my usual dull response,
if you can pass around a glass
of your quintessential piss
and savor each of my drafts
with the exhilaration you get
from a sip of near beer,
if you can wear your clothes inside out
displaying their glaring seams and patterns,
and behold me awestruck
as by any man or woman on the street,
if you can run out naked into the snow,
wallow in it, sizzle it up to the sky,
and feel my hot concentration indoors
on a video game or the weather channel,
then you, my friend, must be a poet.
Not bad. I think whether or not the audience of this poem is a “poet” depends on who is the speaker of this piece. I almost feel as if the speaker is the personification of some divine or natural force.
Thanks for the comment. The speaker is the reader but, as you imply, speaking more comprehensively than either the intense poet or the indifferent reader alone.