Poets and writers have it easy.

Where painters and sculptors
must hone their skills for a lifetime
to approach beauty in their work

writhe in frustration
when the marble won't assume the right form

watching paint dry
wrongly

I can just write
"she was beautiful"
and everyone
recognizes you

There is this interesting phenomenon in music perception that when the natural overtones of a certain tone are all present, the human auditory system hears that certain tone even when it is not actually there

Which is how the talented electronics nerds in industrial design manage to extract booming bass from tiny earphones - it is not actually there, it is all between your ears

Is that what poets do?  Strike an idea and carefully note down its overtones which happen to be representable in words? So that when we are lucky, the reader can reconstruct that which the tiny piece of writing can't possibly contain?

Is a poem anything but
awkwardly juxtaposed words
in a grotesque attempt
to paint meaning

The building blocks of thought
so delightfully inadequate
grinning from the page -
We can't help it either

We belong in your mouth,
not on paper

My dear
what are you doing?

If I were young and romantic
I would stay,
wondering what changed
and searching my soul for my errors

and you would write poems
about how we "grew apart"
and about how I never "got" you

But I am not young
and probably not romantic

So instead you will write poems
about how unfair it was for me to leave
and about how I was the only one who ever "got" you

You leave me no other choice
because in your mind
"we" have already become a memory

And reality could never compete.

I never quite noticed
there are
so many people
who aren't you

We promise
we will take a daily dose of each other

We promise
we won't notice how we become a habit

We promise
we will recognize so much of us in cheezy love songs and poetry

We promise
we won't notice how poetry turns to prose
how prose turns to factual reports
about how our days were

notice how what was that thing only we had going
becomes an item on a silent list
between the brushing of teeth and the getting up for work

how a fingertip brushing our grey callous skins
draws retreat and silent apologies where it once drew goosebumps

how our lips black from unspoken misunderstandings
yearn for way back when

Maybe we should have overdosed when we still could
We would have died in bliss
we heard the uncle cynic's snicker
stain the "till death do us part" with truth

It's not so much his ignorance
of your existence
you should fear

When he really wants
to ******* over
he'll hit you twice.