Sentences and Two Other Poems

by Henrik Hoeg

Sentences

This sentence is self-referential.

This sentence has five words.
This sentence has five words, or seven.
This sentence will never have five words, nor a soulmate.

This sentence no verb.
This jumbled sentence is.
This sentence, fragment.

This sentence ends in a non-sequitur pacifist shuttle-cock.
This sentence ends quixotically.
This sentence is not ironic.

This sentence is short.
The prisoner’s sentence is extended.
A tired sentence stops and a lively one runs on.

Cette phrase est en Français.

This sentence ends the poem.

 

The Jury’s Prudence

His briefcase is burdened
By documents in turn
Burdened by jargon

His briefcase is lined
With silver, presumably
Out of necessity

His brief case is over.
The sea turned to blood
And only the leeches
Were doing the backstroke

 

A Kiss at Street Level

What neurons know of love and hate
Is a limit nothing can negate
For it Is not for them to revel
In the language of the upper level

As little as a letter on a page of Hamlet knows
So each man in our city goes
Ill equipped to see the prose
Of which he’s in the very throes

Are you just a minor part
Of some complex emergent art?
It’s as I pause to think on this
That I taste my city’s kiss.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email