Poem: Written

I have poems lying around, buried and crumpled under books, squashed in miscellanea, etc.  Here's one

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Written

it was done.  written.
the holes in the letters formed small eyes.
looked up.

so many words coursing the Earth.
parades of happysad tomorrows,
giddy, giving, mad, mindless, cursed,
thankful, brutal, cruel, indignant or shamed,
prayerful and infernal,
all of it mostly ignored
and yet always read.

the phrases themselves
tended to make revisions,
rescript the plot,
fruit the novel's weight.
the intent
had never been to finish
or to specify a start. 

it had been wished 
that the twine of the characters
would rewrite the writer,
yank that very first plot
into their own expanding personas. 

it had been considered
that the offshoots, once fiction,
would launch on unprecedented trips in which
no one
could really take credit
or maybe even suffer the blame.

the garden
had existed before the growth.
unborn thorns pricked the pace.

those first flowers,
they had wanted to capitalize Love;
and in that critical, crucial moment
had tried to seize the pen
stroking dutiful and quick--

just before the nuances in the ink
settled into a glisten of skins
to breathe.

 

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11/26/25 ... problematic as can be... 

8/2/25 eds... took out some rare words, like "afflatus" for words people know