poem

 Poem #39

Poems never asked to be here

They’re just like us

Products of some dumb young

American male writhing 
With the girl he thinks he loves

Or vice versa

But it never lasts, that feeling.

Something gets smashed

A final thrust, a shudder, a heaving silence 

There has to be something better

Parents move on to something else 

It’s the poems get left behind

Empty husks of words

Abandoned to dangerous vulnerability

Cute, but a lot of work

No one to tend to them 

To trim unwieldy nouns

From their chins

To swaddle stanzas

With loving precision.

They forget their own names 

But the good ones remain hopeful 

Of feeling full again

Once read again

And so they wait encased 

Between dusty covers

Of long forgotten books

For the right someone, 

In the proper frame of mind,

I'm hoping it could be you,

To grasp them by the spine

And read them straight through

3/15/22