honest, the ones that hurt the most to write
are the self-love poems because
they remind me no one's around
to do it for me. they're also the most rewarding
to finish for the same reason. sometimes i sit at
the hickory writing desk my grandfather built
waiting for clarity to be chirped out of the bulb of a
trumpet or true love honked longingly from the
fever nose of a saxophone but it never happens that way.
instead i write my feelings -- veined hand curled
around a crude pencil with gnawed erasers at both ends.
or idly scratch the flowers from the wallpaper
while the moon looks down like a twisted bottle-cap
smashed in half by macho fingers into the gray
asphalt sky primping its reflection in the pond,
i think that someday i'll learn to love myself the same
way, by facing all my bad parts in the sharp mirror and my
friends abandoning me. each time they do i hold church inside
my own individual heart on sundays or saturdays,
huddled tight on the first frozen december morning around
a hymnal fire altar, only standing to **** or light another
stick of peppered citrus incense. but right now
i've got a crumb of real turkish hash
and only spittle left in the wine bottle reciting Keats
to the empty moon-painted cow field across the brittle fence
and laughing with lilac bulbs pasted on my face, watching
a low cloud thread itself between the skinny
barbs of pecan tree fingers as i wander through
the orchard. the stars hop restlessly like chigger bugs
and sparkle raw in my
swimming-pool-blue eyes but the ones that
blink back really aren't stars at all.