It's hard to write a poem
When there's nothing going on
It's hard to think of what to say
When you've given most of it away

As poets we never scratch the surface
We delve within, disclose our deepest sin
We crave our pain, declare it's for our art
Yet more often than not have no idea where to start

But start we do and start we must
A deep desire in all of us
To spill out on the written page
What little bit we have tried to save

Ink now is the poets blood
Fragments of self pour from within
Silence is our safety net
To stop us from bleeding out

Although it's hard to write a poem
With nothing going on
We still find words to form a verse
From deep within our marrow bone

Work © Mike Hauser & © Sia Jane

the waves will crash down over the
message in the bottle I will sail out to
sea tomorrow
and the message will entail how I wonder
what mutual love feels like
and how often I play the scenes over in my head of the times I told people I loved them
and blue birds would sing and chase each other around my head and morph into butterflies into my stomach
while they would say they loved me back
and I would wait for the blue birds to move to their head
but I forgive them when you accept
that I may just be unlovable

And when someone finds the bottle
they may find me
for I will wait for someone to love me the way I know I deserve to.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,
The stalk of a lily,
And still cannot go.

The second sorrow
Is the empty feet
Of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers.
The woodland of gold
Is folded in feathers
With its head in a bag.

And the third sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers
The minutes of evening,
The golden and holy
Ground of the picture.

The fourth sorrow
Is the pond gone black
Ruined and sunken the city of water-
The beetle's palace,
The catacombs
Of the dragonfly.

And the fifth sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp.
One day it's gone.
It has only left litter-
Firewood, tentpoles.

And the sixth sorrow
Is the fox's sorrow
The joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds,
The hooves that pound
Till earth closes her ear
To the fox's prayer.

And the seventh sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window
As the year packs up
Like a tatty fairground
That came for the children.