is the poem a visitor
that the poet guides across
the river Styx
and into the afterlife
of the reader’s eye?

or is the poem a piece
of the poet that they break off
to share with the world
in hopes of understanding
but at the cost
of their wholeness?

or is the poem the energy
of the universe channeled
through both willing
and unwilling conduits
that you know best
as the poet?

or is the poem just words
scribbled purposefully
but for reasons uncertain,
created in a brief flash
of white-hot inspiration
or in a soothing release
of the dull, aching
need to create?

when the poem sits there,
steaming hot and fresh on
paper or screen, the poet
knows the answer to this
question.

ask them again, any other time,
and they could not tell you what
a poem is, just how they feel and
if the next one is coming soon.

emotion visits me now as a stranger
whose greetings resonate with an
unfamiliar drawl and whose arms
no longer slide effortlessly into
mine

she feels warm like a drunk
yet traces my spine with cold
fingers

in her eyes, I can see memories
but she knows I cannot remember
them

so after a short while as she walks away,
telling me that she doesn’t need to meet
my new partner, I can feel the last strand
between us unceremoniously
snap

we both have it all wrong
and yet both of us smile

tonight, I go home, thinking about the life
I’ve given myself and grasp a pillow as I
turn over in bed

this, I think, is the best I can bet
as I look out at the uncaring stars
and enjoy the welcoming silence

it means that I am scared
that for the love I failed
before, I am cursed to fail
forever.

what does it mean
if I don’t want her
to come back home
tonight?

the problem of mortality is
that we will never know which
poem will be the last.
so we have to keep
making them,
better and better,
each one an improvement
on the last,
because we fear
that from the afterlife
(which all poets believe in)
we will read our last poem
and it will be about
something stupid.

like the futility of life
or the last poem we’ll
ever write.

Bukowski would have written a poem now,
I think, at one am as I **** in the toilet
and the TV flickers quietly
in the other room.

he would write about how she sleeps alone
in his big, new bed and about how he’s not
comfortable in love
but loves anyways

and I think, I would write that poem too
but it would not be quite as beautiful, not
to mention its lack of passion

for Bukowski’s was a hot fire
and mine is a cold one

his was force
and
mine is a bond

that’s why when I read him,
that first time and to this day,
I feel that I can finally
write

because poetry is
a fire, a hot fire,
the hottest there
is

but my warmth is external
it comes from good poetry
and success and love,
all of which I have
but cannot
use

Bukowski would say **** it
and drink to the cold summer night
for being itself despite the odds

he would buy a lotto tickets
till his paycheck was gone
and smile when not a single
one cashed in

you’ll figure it all out when you accept
that you don’t understand

that’s where I’m at,
******* at one am while my love
sleeps soundly without me

at a loss for understanding
versus a world that owes me
no explaining

hopefully, things will get
easier

I wonder if I will write on the plane tomorrow
about the feeling of engines revving up with a growl
or seeing all these people and wondering why they go
or maybe I won’t write this time
maybe there’s no point to that
now

I wonder a lot now a days
spending my hours contemplating my minutes

so if I write a poem on the plane tomorrow
it’ll probably be just like this one:

not about what is happening
and a desperate waste of time