It’s 4 am and I’m grinding
coffee to finish this poem
the flickering light bulb
above my head swings like
a pendulum scalping
my every thought
I’m nothing like her
she can stitch a breath of life
Into every word she strings
she shucks & plucks out words
between hard back covers
and stacks her books
like bricks
she builds walls
with pages of prose
that harness the storm
within her
me, I go out into the toothless
night, the homeless alleys,
to mug and strangle words
into submission
I punch my poems together
butchered baloney
jagged edged puzzles
carved out
with a boning-blunt knife
I wire them together
with copper
and solder them tight
with tin from the Tinman’s
new heart
I look to the sky
and howl
like a frantic Frankenstein
I hit the switch…
It’s alive! It’s Alive!
Look at it!
look at it laying there
all naked and alone
graphite ink across
crumpled white sheets
my poem
you can look, even linger
but please don’t lust
for this poem
this poem
though flawed
is a piece of us all
