I didn’t know what to make of it.
I waited for connections to form
between this outside notion

and the unsorted accumulations
in the attic of my mind.
I thought of Cage’s question:
Is the sound of a loud truck
more musical when passing by
a piano factory?

I thought of ambient music, and
one of the ways Eno defined it:
that unlike the symphonic,
which precludes nearly everything
in pursuit of only the notes
on each page,

Ambient was meant to be inclusive:
the sounds on the record, yes,
but also the notes coming from
birds you can’t see, phones
ringing, the murmur of your
neighbors’ TV.

I thought of the old mayor in
Shortbus, the origins of our
boundaries, how we each, at
our own speed, learn to let
what’s inside out, outside in:
permeability.

Then Kyoto, that most
alluring, impermeable city.
Windows and doors in just
the right spot, so when the
shoji slide open, that distant
hill joins the room.



What’s presumed about a
poem’s edges? They’re neat
on a page, absent in our minds.

This play on space, including
something remote and indefinite,
that the artist didn’t create:

A poet constructs a portable room,
with no way of knowing what its
sliding doors will frame.

Pronouns, the skeleton keys
of poetry’s reuse, like variables
in an unproven equation.

Our object: the myths themselves
which surround each thing, some
thing. That thing itself?

Each reader decides:
It could be a plate of cheese,
a committee meeting, or the air

of a lover’s last breathe,
transiting the lips
to rejoin the skies.

Origins:

From this prompt:

Nelle Lytle encourages you to keep going with your NaPoWriMo poems by writing inside-out or outside-in. She says:

I watch too much HGTV, so I have learned (very well) about bringing the outdoors inside and also turning outside spaces into rooms (which is, apparently, more than putting the old sofa out on the front porch).

In our case, writing inside out (or outside in) means setting your physical or metaphorical inner bits out of doors,  to be walked around and looked at from odd angles, as if they were monuments or mailboxes (as an example).  Or it could be transforming your internal organs into flowers or letting a pack of four-year-old’s (human or otherwise) loose in your attic.

Write a poem today that illustrates your idea of what is inside-out.