Tall Ideas

Adam Wolfond

are the open way of thinking
that use the patterns of the way
I motion with language

breathe like the way I amass
sometimes air
in my insides

carry heavy weight
like the having to good
ideas write

don’t like boy’s really
moving body of questions
that form tower of answers

eagerly want
to beat
the others

forge
toward
others

go
yonder

hang

impact
the wanting
words

jump from one
thought
to the next

kettle
like
fish

lavish like talking
people if they doctor
the words

master
language
openly

navigate
words toward
meaning

operate the machine
landing the thoughts amazing
that they don’t fall apart

pave
the wanting
road

question
wanting

really ask
more
questions

slant
with peeving
typing

tire to something
that rolls
with the road

use
people
to answer

vortex the void
and assembles
gathering words

water
thoughts
like rain

exit the door of cold
raying water
other is the way

yesses
the yonder

zoning the word and
uses the idea
to language everything

Adam Wolfond is the author of the poetry collection The Wanting Way (Milkweed Editions, 2022). He is a non-speaking, autistic artist, poet, and university lecturer whose work has been featured in multimedia exhibitions, documentary films, academic journals, and philosophical treatises. He is also the author of two chapbooks: There Is Too Music in My Ears and In Way of Music Water Answers Toward Questions Other Than What Is Autism, both published in 2019 by Unrestricted Editions.

Themes

About this Poem

“Adam Wolfond wrote the poem ‘Tall Ideas’ at the A Collective, which studies emergent conditions and relations that support neurodiverse expression. Adam’s interests are language and thought, the way that neurotypical language tends to delimit expression, and how we privilege the speaking. He asserts that there is a misunderstanding among ‘talkers’ that non-speaking people are incompetent and unaware.”
—Estée Klar for Adam Wolfond

Sign up for Poem-a-Day

In Way of Music Water Answers

Like water I am eager
Like water I am thinking
Like water I always move

Like water I am thinking time
open and following eager going
pathways and open going nowhere

I boat on the way water the way I want to talk

Adam Wolfond

2022

Roaming the Forest of Eager Talking

The eager clattering singing wastes my listening
and I am over

ready to run breathing the ways the
sticks invite my wanting

I want to think in feeling ways the talking thinks
in moving ways the sticks invite

thinking answering their questions
the eager clattering singing does

always interrupt the sailing play
the play is the questions the sailing

is the tears I know the tears
will overfill ready to become

a thinking and feeling I am
ready to become a loving man

Adam Wolfond

2022

The Beauty of Autistic Knowing

The way of learning pace
was how I learned to string
words the way language paths
and makes meanings the way
jar of thinking was really

bathing in brine wanting to
for readers to understand
but the management of
language at ABA schools
was demanding speech and

because I couldn’t speak
I was going to the lines of
watchful therapists that tried
the same words over and
over again so I wasn’t

able to express myself
in the ways they thought
I should and that was awful

Adam Wolfond

2022

Poems

Tall Ideas

More by this poet

In Way of Music Water Answers

Roaming the Forest of Eager Talking

The Beauty of Autistic Knowing

Poems

Page submenu block

Tall Ideas

More by this poet

Newsletter Sign Up