Poetry

Writing poems about writing poems
is like eating when you’re not hungry.
Nothing but the savory flavors and textures
to satiate whatever void you’re trying to fill.

Everyone knows hunger’s the best sauce.

Because there has to be some artistic
thirst that makes an artist want
to write a poem. And if one must
compose about the subject
of composing, well,
Where lies the passion?

A poem should communicate and convey,
just as ancient deer careening across caves in France
offer glimpses of what we used to say.

A poem should break free from the confines of guidelines
just as vines twist and struggle to grasp
the tops of trellises and slowly wind
their way to the sides of mossy houses.

A poem should know where it is going,
for doesn’t anyone know that when
you don’t know where you’re going
you could get lost? Or worse,
you could find a place that suits you
and forget about the going, not knowing
what lies out there in the great expanse.

Writing poems about writing poems
is like trying not to think about elephants:
pointless.

Where is the legacy?

Because a poem is a trinket.

A poem should be some thing
you want to leave behind
in a time capsule along with:
hair for cloning,
a dollar bill with Palin’s face taped over Washington’s,
a tarnished piece of your first ipod nano.

So that after you die
it will wait, wait, and wait
and perhaps no one will find it,

But if it so happens that
someone’s grubby fingers unfold
the old tattered sheets
they will perhaps read it and
tears will come streaming down their
rose colored cheeks.

Because the ink on that page will do more
than smudge their eager hands. From distant lands
these words will reach ashore.

A poet in one place and
a person in another connected by
a sea of waves between the two.