Picasso understood
That most beautiful people in the world
Are unfinished

Still in the process of learning all the letters
To spell out their names

Sketches on a canvas
Waiting for the laughter of paint

When she left him
He knew he could never
See her again and left
Her portrait, a wedding gift
Unfinished

Buried it in the rack
Forgot about it for many years

When he found it again
As an old man
His eyes still full of fire
And the green of sassafras
He took her down to finish her
But couldn’t

Something’s he knew
Were meant to be left
Undone

Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn.

“our fathers were better men.”
the thought drifted away like the smoke from my mouth.
i wondered if my father had thought the same thing --
and his father before him.

that’s when it scared me.
someday my son will be sitting, smoking a cigarette --
just like his father told him never to do -- thinking:
“my father was a better man.”

I put two handles of whiskey on the counter,
and the cashier asked if I was having a party.
I told her I was preparing for a weekend by myself.
She didn't know what to say.
I told her life should mean more than this, paid and walked away.

There is a poem I can't write, it only has two lines
But I'm not a minimalist, I'm an underachiever.