one hundred : write when it strikes (it won’t strike twice)
take out that pen
put it to use
that one
two
eight thousand word work of art
(if it even starts)
won’t write itself
it might live
as a bud in the mind
for years
but every rise and set
is back burning
a forest of poetry reduced to ash
floating
you can try
again
and again
to bring it back
the way it was
write it in a year
plant each new word
a seed
to grow a new forest
still green
wide
dense
alive
but different
no names carved deep
no path to the river
it’s the same story
with no soul
eleven : better
the moment cannot come again.
when glass crackled underfoot,
our fingers entwined in a tangle of smoke,
when words mattered,
when things were different.
better.
different.
the moment is a moment gone,
and now you’re a sound i don’t hear.
a song i know, too low.
beyond reach.
and you tell me with her, it’s different.
better
different.
Nine : windows and wind
The old windows rattle with wishes and needs,
as the cold winds breath shudders through cracks under doors,
and the windows all sigh with the thought of the world,
where the wind carries clouds over mountains and shores.
While old windows are stuck on the walls of old houses,
the wind moves the forests to get to the sea,
it whispers through yards in the middle of night
making shadows and ghosts with the washingline sheets.
They wait ever patiently craving the world,
as the houses fill up with the pink sky of dawn,
and the windows look out without hope or agenda,
only knowing that soon will be wind driven storm.
So they listen to sounds that will give way to thunder,
the noise that the animals make in the walls,
the waves and the oceans and forests and trees,
the oceanside birds that taste salt on the breeze.
seven : loneliness
each day goes by in a haze of introductions—
never getting past the introductions.
on the ride home
city lights are shining
like blue-green beacons
in a liquid sky.
i can taste the cold
like silence,
smoke,
tinfoil,
tepid water.
four : collision
he climbs up my legs.
i melt into the mattress and he asks me to move for him
the fast silk he winds around
my hands, the bed:
ice on fevered skin.
wild lips twitch over mouth, cheek, collarbone.
the rise and fall,
a tide.
each collision further,
shifting space until there’s none.
i listen to him burn till i am ashes on the bed.
a cigarette until the morning comes,
spreading hot
and high
and then—
fading.
