Bad Ones

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.