I’m stuck fighting for covers—when poetry—or the art of making poetry—ought to be a very different kind of competition. One, namely,
where its contestants aren’t in love. But I am in love. So poetry comes harder (fuck it, hardly). It’s difficult to write about difficulty
when love greases the daily passage, and when plots begin to form toward family—which, if you didn’t know, is always healthier boring.
Diction then, waits for us
to chop and sting. With girlfriends
at the elbows, rotten teeth
proceeding. What manages
to capture us is what hatches us back
in the end—I imagine. What catches
at our naps. Fattens limbs and faces
so as to detract from the actual
sabotage. Awful ain’t it,
that a camera’s illusory frame
can’t settle stomachs after snacks,
can’t catch the edges of its promised shot.
Promised shooting being not even
to mention the rest of what’s happening.
The explanation of a photograph—
all the truth it purports and makes
horrible, plain and present
is pure herring where read
letters fester. It is putting
in the proof. Vertical day
before ignoring, slipped in sleep
when bed’s too full of rest.
At best she’d snore important, lip
a sweet thing believed so meant.
But even now I know your thoughts
aren’t always with me. And I know
because it’s ok. Even in this climb,
this plumb to the source of love isn’t always
true. Yet you know it still has meaning,
hanging there. It is still our most solid solution.
The wandering body, the babbling
soul goes ever after. Nettle kept,
thistle hatched, baby you are my baby
until I lose my eyes. Until I catch a
hunk of metal. Until I bend and wrench
and rend. And then you will let go.
There is dirt under my nails, and it is not
beautiful. That saying so might even
pretend to be revelatory is because
we’ve backtracked. But each rounded
pass is yet anew, even highways poured
with traffic, then somehow with pebbles.
Only, that our spread is not so even
is what makes for our unease. That
there is distance between being in love
and loving. That, though there might
not be such things as second chances,
there’s sometimes want in life for two.
