Poem

Poem #12

A poem always starts from a flash of color out of the corner of your eye. Then a mad scramble for a pen, some scraps of paper. Close your eyes, the racing heart, the do or die or missing it altogether. So the words come like puzzle pieces lost under cushions. Piece it back together again. Pastiche. Collage. It fades fast. And there always comes a point in a poem where you lose the scent. Not sure where you’re going, what it was supposed to have meant. It can’t be avoided. If you don’t get here you haven’t gone in deep enough. If you get stuck, then crumple it up. It may have just been a desert mirage all along. Either way, in the end, it all works out. This half slip of paper, marked up in black script, so light and clean and trifling, is the thing you’ve fetched from the depths of the oily dark abyss.

4/16/20