Don't approach a dog unknown to you
Holding out your hand, making eye contact
You may frighten him
Let him come to you

Don't write a poem uninspired
It won't work out
In good time
Let it come to you

Don't go out there seeking love
Like a child with a butterfly net
Live your life
Let it come to you

"It's been a few hours," you said,
"I feel fine."
But the crash didn't take your life,
It took mine.
Well mine and some others,
A family of four.
As the bumpers collided,
The windshield became my door.
While I take my last breaths,
On this pavement death bed,
I watch you get out of the car,
Walking, crying, shaking your head.
Four bubbling drinks,
Took five important lives.
I can only hope the next time you take a sip,
Those bubbles stab at your memory like knives.

Caught -- the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed -- the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

We are young men buried in books
Shoveling words every day
As we are gradually shaped into tools.

Ours minds drained deep in the pools
Of knowledge. So they say
We are young men buried in books.

We find ourselves caught in hooks
Of wisdom seekers shall we pray?
As we are gradually shaped into tools.

Exhausted, some will turn into crooks
While we proudly remain grey
We are young men buried in books.

We bear fruit of hope from the roots
Of pain so follow the rules we lay
As we are gradually shaped into tools.

Are we zombies in schools?
In our paths we never stray.
We are young men buried in books
As we are gradually shaped into tools.

As pained as we may be physically there is no greater hurt than a poet living in a poemless age