You still owe me an explanation
Before you ruin another night
All the questions
All the pain
No need to start again
When we both know
Where it will end
Secrets exposed
All the stones unturned
All the memories
Let them burn

It is as if
My most golden time
Was when I had absolutely
No need for gold
All that altered my life
Was the glimmer in your eye

There's movement afoot.
Occupants and sycophants
Are scattering
From the Rainbow Rooms
To the more concrete setting
Of the Oral Office,
Where the North and South Porticos
Admit the transients
Behind the secure cement walls
Of the Skinners.

My use of personal pronouns
Puts me in my poem;
I can roll a rock with Sisyphus,
Be in a ceiling flame in Rome.

I can bring you back to life,
Sharing tales and tea;
Sitting there before my fire,
For all eternity.

I go marauding with Attila,
Walk with Neil Armstrong,
Fly high with Amelia,
Be a Beatle with my song.

My pronouns give me presence
In my lover's residence;
I'm just a specter she can't see;
A spirit roaming outside of me.

I can jot an I with you,
I could pen an our;
But that's just ink on my notebook,
Not as sweet as sour.

I can use my pronouns
To put you in my verse;
And then I lay my pen down,
I'm cursed, but none the worse.
You're just poetry to me.

I have to have time
to grind

myself into
poetry

where everything
is beautiful

even a
raven


Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

When your time closes in
Faster than laughter and red lights,
I wish you to be worn and threadbare
As the Velveteen Rabbit,tattered,
With a walker and stair chair;
My cane and umbrella waiting
By your leave.

I hope you're wearing the cardigan
I got you this Christmas,
Mended and draped over your frail shoulders,
Mingling with your hair.

I pray you have children bringing children
To feast on shortbread and tea.
I see you alone, at times, in tranquility,
Recalling me,
Who missed it all.

The most rhymed word
In the poetry world is
Me.
That reveals volumes about
Us.