This post is part of an ongoing collaboration between WDDI and Spiderweb Salon. We've previously been introduced to the likes of Walker Smart in their first shared post with us and countless others in the endless barrage of excellent live shows they have been hosting. Keep up with Spiderweb Salon, and see the great work they're doing showcasing the creative community through a series of live performances.

Joseph Carr reading at the 35 Denton Spiderweb Salon show.

Joseph Carr is a legally deaf poet who has been writing now for over a decade. While he has very little formal education, he has been a practicing autodidact studying for years within the areas of literature, poetry, theology, technology, language, and philosophy. His writing and research stem from his personal struggles with silence, withdrawal, abandonment, transparency, and the questions of compassion, humility, the divine, and the possibility of love. Carr read his poetry aloud for the very first time at the Spiderweb Salon show that took place on the lawn of the square in February.

Seeing as it's national poetry month, we thought it appropriate for Carr's works to be featured this month. Below, we have two of Carr's poems for your reading pleasure. Read through them, and if you have any interest in becoming a part of Spiderweb or perhaps catching one of Carr's readings in the future, be sure to keep an eye on their upcoming events page here.

Love is a myth

Our plans, laid at night, woken at day
to lead the way as Ariadne, with thread so fine and paltry,
if they carry us far it is to everlasting shipwreck on foreign grounds.
Our actions but the flailing of infants, the wailing of woes
to tease Persephone from her captors with a song,
one to make the Furies weep as they did, and, with us, do still.
Our efforts are jests, pokes, irreverent worship
to disenchant Arachne with that same defiant foolishness,
expending lifetimes weaving chains in exchange for freedom.
Our faces wrung of emotion, poured out in mirrors
to shed the dark as Psyche, so ugly, such revelation
makes every lover flee in a storm of feathers and shame.
Our feet, torn and bruised by a shallow and feeble torpor
to lead the blind as Ismene in a tumult of fear
when even the uncanniest care does yet cower in the last.
Our hope a whimpered prayer at a powdered monument
to steal away Alcestis from demons unawares
borrowing minutes in an immemorial chorus of dread.
Our desires fickle as wind, wispy as clouds
to lend the future wings as Daedalus, ever cautious
till, in us, fire of sun meet most abyssal waters.
And love too is a myth ancient and tragic,
belated, it slips, like so many tongues
in so many mouths, telling so many stories,
singing so many songs, reciting so much verse;
dry and arid lips, confessing parched lies
of words and worlds,
and fire and water and sky.

Piezomechanesis

You’re full of luciferase,
and I’ve been hungry ever since.

I was 5, you, a month, middle aged,
already drunk on the twilight pools
I’d barely dipped my ankles in.

Maybe it was the cold light,
the hoary frost on your lips,
but I wanted you immediately,
wielding your aether
through the scissor punctures
of a gilded mason jar lid.

2 blinks for yes, 1 for no,
or maybe it’s more complicated,
a flashing sonnet
torn from an Aeolian harp.

Maybe it’s a sacrament,
and by the time you speak,
I’ll be just as dazzling.