This is another one of my poems written after an extended dry spell in my creative work. The point of this poem is not necessarily to convey a message, but rather a study of the expansion of text, and other principles of deconstruction discussed by Derrida.

The main idea with which I am working is that the text of a book is expanded beyond the book artifact because the language of a text is informed by previous experience with the same language. In other words, the way in which a reader has read a particular word (for instance), like "logic," in various books and dictionaries, determines how that person reads the word "logic" in any other book. Since outside texts inform the text of a book, those outside texts are all part of the same text. If that makes any sense, please raise your hand and say "aye."

This isn't meant to be a nice poem, so do not feel bad if you read this poem, and would rather not lie and say "cool." What I am interested in is finding out if people see any structural integrity in teh poem, Derrida notwithstanding.

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Considering a Book After Reading Derrida
By Robert Clark
7/23/04

The bald man with the PhD on his office wall:
Framed with mahogany, gold-leafed, textured.
He said something about history and death to students
I was in the room, and I had lost my place
Among twenty bodies of chemicals
Failing organs, out of tune and played arythmically.

There was a dictionary open on a table, waiting
It had some words, and I read them through my glasses
While my daughter sang “Three Blind Mice.”
Dissonant: adjective, unless your daughter is singing “Three Blind Mice”
In that case, it is a noun, a verb, and it does not have tense,
Except my creeping muscles in my face
Which my wife and daughter read,
And they say that I am happy or sad
Sad is a face where the corner of the mouth drops down
She is wrong of course
Just like dissonant is not an adjective
And my daughter plays Ring-Around-The-Rosy
With her flea-bitten friends
And I have never worried about the Bubonic plague before
I may get to witness history, but I don’t have to like it
Especially if it starts now, on my front yard
Next to where my neighbor’s dog relieved himself
With a bone.

If I keep writing, I could go on forever.
I guess I just don’t believe anything I read anymore.