Poetry is the last thing
That would occur to letters
that were mulling around
hunting for something to say.
Words, if pressed, would testify
that gathering to rhyme is
only for holidays.
Proud writers feel awkward
leaving only verse,
daggling statements that are
unsure of their periods.
But I prefer the short shit,
it pleasantly matches
the number of readers I have.
Men carry silence
in satchels
filled with oaths,
weaved loosely
from malice
All we are certain o
is that we have forgotten
why.
My life has been a child’s day
and I will be slow to fall asleep.
For many are the dreams that come,
and no cause to hurry.
Every death,
comes with its particular
novelty.
While birth
plods into life
with sloppy
inaccuracy,
tumbling incoherently
through thick,
sticky afterbirth,
shackled to incomprehension.
Still,
we guess birth
to be miraculous
while it’s endgame,
death
is reviewed as a misfortune
accompanied by a chorus
of “if only’s.”
and the tardy
howls of loss.
But of what good is the marvelous
if you can’t watch?
We are forever
guessing
if we are a song.
Nothing is soundless.
We suspect but are never sure
that our noises carry.
My whistling
may reach Neptune.
But Neptune, like God,
does not echo.
Birds don’t care so much
for their own songs.
They care about eggs
and nests
and the size of baby new wings.
Cicadas lullaby summer evenings.
But the night doesn’t pick up
their theme
and begin to dance.
Flies whizz
their little ditties
by our ears.
And we brush them away,
like eavesdropped insults.
The flowers
exhale their perfumes
into the winds
blinding the dazzled slave bees.
Nothing disturbs the evenhanded blizzard
that is being alive or the drama
of surprising death,
and the odd collisions with love.
She sits among her
snowflake suitors.
All sincere,
Each different,
Each the same
all waiting.
Until she finds
the one
that echoes her song.
Do memories
cast loose
by your life’s end,
wait bewildered
for you
to come back home,
Like pets at windows?
The little lifetimes of first love
All whirling and crashing
about your heart
like hungry snowflakes,
all different
all the same,
till one
does not melt away.
Love is what the battlefield presents to you
after you have vanquished all it’s imposters.
There is only the hum of being alive.
Nothing affects this even handedness.
Certainly not how long you are allowed to sing.
Eternity is a grooved spinning record,
and we go round and round,
forever guessing if we are a song
or simply the melody.
