Legacy
Leather bound journals filled with words
Line the shelves of humanity
Everyone has to write
You can jot down whatever you like
Some entries are drab lists
Of whatever you did that day
Many are written with a loveless passion
Like the first gasps of air
After a near drowning
Many are entirely dishonest
But can’t exactly be called lies.
A few apologize, deeply, from the heart
Some swirl around the edges
Of a hollow point that swallows all sentences.
Many are incoherent drivel best
Ripped out, crumpled and tossed
But then you flip to a page where it all changes—
You fall in love with life
As if it were your own
Suddenly, definitions seem smitten
With their referent terms
Somebody says poetry!, pointing,
But you never see what they saw
You point at her pointing, and say
Poetry! leaving your own void on the world
For no one to really see.
Then it’s a series of yesses and amens
Followed by a broken matrix
Of epiphanies and prophecies, and primitive
Sketches of what might be a real philosophy.
You see yourself on the stern of a riverboat
Waving at you as you watch your own life float by
It’s already been bookmarked for posterity
And you’re late to the party
By the time you get there
It’s just another white sheet
Someone will have to smudge.
Every so often the handwriting changes
And it takes a page or two to get used to it
Eventually, as is often the case, form asserts
Its dominance over sound or maybe
It’s the other way around and the only
Thing that never changes is meaning.
By the time you’re done you have to rush
To scribble a couple of lines or maybe just one
Open-ended, unfinished, wandering clause.
Your last act is to try to erase.
Nowadays, kids are on to the ruse
There’s nothing left to say!, they say.
They see those boxes of brand new journals
Every last bit of it, all made up!
Just waiting for the next sucker to fill
Boring! Stupid! Unnecessarily cruel!
Out of respect for their elders
Every boy and girl now dares
To leave it blank.
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