The soft sounds of quiet
Whispers of elm and violet

I could only imagine
The smell of fires

And the look of flames
With their cotton skins
Crackling

Each pop tracing embers
Into the skies thought

The stars laughing at my art
Grasping for another color

I dip my pen in the water
And sink my thoughts in an otter
Only to find out
It was a muskrat

I've never seen one before now
They sure make beavers look much bigger
Than on TV

In all my gaze
I watched a steelhead pass by my bait
That beautiful red
Left me in moss
And silent breaths

And by the way
This isn't a poem

But I wrote it any way
As a reminder
Why words gather
Blackberries
And the way they pierce
The fingers poking
With their thorny vines
Leaving blood on poetry sites

All these thoughts on fire
The smoke dissipates
As the coals get hotter

Now the wood is almost gone
The melted frame of my bottle
Reminds me what is left

The emptiness of heat
The turning cold
And why you bothered to read
The scroll

Your welcome
Said thank you for coming
But there is one last warning

I can erase
Every word placed
Anything that says
What was written on my face

I can take away the metaphors
And close the opened doors
Of my minds endless complaints

I can delete
Every avenue and every street
Each and every word
That slips through my teeth

Every drop that drips from my ink
I can delete
Faster than you can think
Quicker than you can read
And evaluate my poetry
In what it lacks or needs

I can delete
The nature of this beast
Before it has a chance to eat
What my pen tried to feed

I have that freedom
To delete em
To trash them in a can
And leave em

I can delete
this plastic poem
And it just might
Self destruct at your feet
In your home

Perhaps you resent this
And the power of my emphasis

I can delete it all
While you question my mark
With exclamations
Inside my parentheses

I can delete it all
With no worries to fall
On the dead horse
Beaten once more

To a pulp