“Chirp, Cheep, Peep, Warble, Holler, Honk, Hoot” by Maria Berardi

Chirp, Cheep, Peep, Warble, Holler, Honk, Hoot

(a wrangle with Wittgenstein)

(apologies to Yeats)

I use language 

because it grew from me

and I distrust it because of same.

We sing because of the FOXP2 gene,

we share it with birds, we use it 

like birds, to woo

and to fight and to handle things, 

just let me handle this, 

manipulate,

something can be logically valid and also untrue,

apprehend means two things

and so does appropriate.

And math will always be galactically

more true than anything we can do with words,

with the Logos, I mean

mean means two things too,

two, to – .

And also, appreciate.

I aspire to a total gesture, 

the state of music, 

the dancer and the dance.

About Maria Berardi
She/Her/Hers

Maria Berardi's poems have appeared online, in print, in university literary journals, meditation magazines, newspapers, and art galleries. Her first book, Cassandra Gifts, was published in 2013 by Turkey Buzzard Press, and she is working on her second, Pagan. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Her process is one of listening for transmissions and trying to catch them on paper before they dissipate: the glimpse, the complicated knowledge.