My five year old sister
Is a true poet
She told me it was magic
How letters came together
To form words.

What I need to tell you, what I can't say--
We're all fragile, trying to put things back
Together when they spring apart, until
We give up and we're not there yet, are we?

The right word not said becomes a lost cause.
I should know, whose only trick is silence.

Laughter after miscast stones, poor excuse
For a fountain.  No one believes in words
Like a liar looking for a story.

What I should have taught myself or somehow
Learned, the hardest rock being the only
Salvation, is where the pain goes at last.

Maybe it dissolves, but I suppose it
Reincarnates, finds new soul and body
Out of ashes, wrapped around another
Language, words not intended to be heard.

My sentences, they're a long time coming.
Years ago I said I love you. To tell
The truth, I was scared.  Backseats are the place
Saved for criminals.  Or children, drunks and
Idiots.  That was a long time ago.
I remember it more clearly than this
Morning.  I forgot to say how are you,
Forgot to say I'm not good at living.
You know that by now.  You know everything
I could say, but what I think is always
More.  Tonight I need to say I love you more.

So deep in the blues the devil couldn't
Wake me up, she said Bob you blow my mind
And I said I don't care about any
Of that stuff you got and I don't think you
Ever loved anybody, least likely
Yourself and she cussed a little hearing
It put that way by a fool who hasn't
Lost his innocence and repeats himself
A thousand times in a bad night like now,
When the wind is up and even the birds
And the insects give it a break.  You know
What I mean, better than I can say it,
Which ain't that good lately, deep in the blues.

Your movement to an upper latitude
Has tilted earth a smidgen.  Gravity,
A badly weakened force, reciprocates,
Just strong enough to hold a world in place
But not to stay your drifting. Mountains green,
So far from Tennessee you're orbiting,
While I in place beside my jar, uncorked
And **** near gone, must ride this wobbled wheel.

Not all the world is word, you dare to say.
And i can only nod, so slow to see
The difference, who even prayed, when prayer
Seemed possible, in punctuated breath.

They got pills now that take the place of words
So I'm thinking poetry should give it
Over, being unreliable at
Best and dangerous used as intended.
No quaaludes anymore so that rules out
Ballads, but with serotonin juicers
We could all of us be Rod McKuen.

Sometimes these words are all we have & you
Know I don't use them with a supple tongue,
Would speak as lion if I could, or dog
Or even snake--at least a subtile beast--
While I have thoughts I never recognize
Until it's too late to make any use
And what I mainly want is physical,
This ticking passage of the intellect
Is not about the things that matter most,
Yet here I am, staining the sheets again,
As one who lived a hundred years ago
And hoped to slide between the legs of time.