You can’t write good til
you’ve written a lot of poems
Here are the bad ones
On the Five Year Anniversary of a Day Five Years Ago
When I met you I was —
I try to remember
the person who walked with
my face. Before there was
you, it was a different time
of day. The sun scattered in
other patterns through windows
on opposite sides of a house.
There are very nice pleasures
at dawn, a bright morning. Also
golden hours. And long evenings.
Here we are at the clear hour of
a blameless summer day.
We’ve already set our habits.
You’ve had your coffee, cooked
my breakfast. I stretched,
reached for a few kisses, and off
we step, palm to palm, down from
the front porch stoop, and into
our lives we choose
again and again.
Some Days
I want to lay myself down,
like the simple object
of a transitive verb.
I want to have picked
myself up, only to have
laid myself down.
Both mind and body.
While the rest of me —
goes with the wind
touching the leaves.
Tethered, green,
and free.
Morning trip to the wells
I go to the wells for comfort
and by wells I mean what has always
worked- or at least craved.
Chocolate, the thought of sex,
starting therapy again, a long stretch
face downward on a mat. Putting
something in a shopping cart.
Stay abed til the last possible minute,
even if the sheets have a funk.
This time it is only the comic
I started drawing in my head,
the sketch of myself with a caption,
that opens up my ill-used body,
creaks my stiff muscles, tight chest,
free of my mind. Puts despair
into motion. Airs it out.
Read Me
Found a poem,left by a officeron the sidewalkof an unnoticeable building.Like the City’s violation checkerstuck a vivid ticketin your windshield,but for passerby.What did the poet say?We are made of carbon,all in our current formsby chance.By creation.By conspiring.
Common Poem 