http://www.amazon.com/The-Outlaw-Bible-American-Poetry/dp/1560252278

I love this book...it is filled with well-known and lesser-known poets whose forms vary beyond my own experience and knowledge of poetry. Some of the poems I absolutely love, and others, not so much. I try to stretch myself as a writer/poet. I play in and with language. I am in awe of the written word, and I am blessed to be able to navigate in and through it.

Would love your insight about the poem below. I fell in love with it the minute I finished reading it for the first time.

Lineage

by Jeffrey McDaniel

When I was little, I thought the word loin
and the word lion were the same thing.

I thought celibate was a kind of fish.

My parents wanted me to be well-rounded
so they threw dinner plates at each other
until I curled up into a little ball.

I've had the wind knocked out of me
but never the hurricane.

I've seen two hundread and sixty-three rats
in the past year, but never more than one at a time.
It could be the same rat, with a very high profile.

I know what it's like to wear my liver on my sleeve.

I go into department stores, looking suspicious,
approach the security guard and say
what, what, I didn't take anything.
Go ahead. Frisk me, big boy!

I go to the funeral of absolute strangers
and tell the grieving family: the sould of the deceased
is trapped inside my rib cage
and trying to reach you.

Once I thought I found love, but then I realized
I was just out of cigarettes.

Some people are boring because their parents
had boring sex the night they were conceived.

In the year thirteen hundred and thirteen,
a little boy died, who had the exact same scars as me.