absolute music

i recall something the late poet/novelist jim harrison said, i wanted my poems to be as immediate & enveloping as a dirty picture or a recipe.  of course harrison confessed that poetry cannot compete with the baseline of emotions both of food & music in our minds/bodies.  & yet, when i hear from friends & coworkers that they find poetry cold, distant & too cerebral i counter, do you read/listen to lyrics of songs?  the answer is almost always yes.  i say, do you always understand them?  no.  but do those words hit you in the gut, the groin & the mind?  yes.  then, i say, that is poetry.  written poems are a notch higher in regards to the mind since they are only composed of words without the accompanying music.  & yet, who among us has not taken out & studied the printed lyric sheet from a record or cd.  satori of satoris.  we live in poetry.  there are poems, e.g. thom gunn's 'the miracle' with its quotidian public sex catholic imagery of devotion & love composed by a queer anglo/american atheist poet that hits me right in the heart, groin & mind as any song by the much missed british band, xtc.  often, xtc's andy partridge's lyrics are as dense & cerebral as a great many modern/postmodern of poems.  & when i say 'absolute music' i mean the total expression of our fragile, beautiful, human being.