We should write a song
A song about these lost souls
A song about the shattered hope
A song about these guarded hearts
A song about their forced courage
But no one wants to hear sad songs
So let’s write poetry instead.

So let’s write
About a boy
A little nothing
Who ran from his home of hate
To a world positively brimming with it
Who broadened his small little shoulders
And straightened his spine
While he shivered with cold and nightmares in the night
Let’s write about this little boy who grows into a man
A man with no love ever given
And none received
Who rises to rule
His heart, black, like his hair, jet black.
And the world cowers in fear
While he still shivers at night
But now only with nightmares
So let’s write about his caged heart
Let’s write

So let’s write
About a woman with eyes of honey
With skin wrinkled from smiles
Let’s write about how her eyes go empty and silent
How her smiles become still, fixated
While she stares far away
As her memory stretches back
And she remembers every instance that she has been forced
By fate, life, love, or worse, herself
To smile through
She remembers her childhood dream, broken.
She recalls the first love who ran away
She remembers the stillborn daughter
The man she loved from afar
The crushing of a million silent prayers
The freedom she never gave herself
She always smiles
Not a tear shed
Not a frown marring her face
Never a sadness
But her smiles are not always true
So let’s write about the secrets of her smile
Let’s write

So let’s write
About a young lady
Beautiful, fair, hair as red as fire
Sweet and gentle
Kind to everyone
Loved by everyone
Her family a cocoon of bliss
Let’s write about how she loses her mind every once in a while
How she hears voices calling out to her from nowhere
How she screams and shouts
Pulls at her hair
Messes up her perfect home
Scratches her skin
To be rid of the voices
The medicines won’t work
And the voices won’t leave her
So let’s write about her broken mind
Let’s write

We leave our songs and strings behind
For these tales
We
must write.

Sinister patches of black tar
a roadway of eternal sink holes
the wonder of future
the wonder of you

romance me away from this rock
moss is growing under my poetry
the ink in ebony dress
levity is the broken line in the middle
of the interstate,
but my state of mind never passes you

I just hang back, hang-dog expression
eclipsed vision
the sun is a fox chased by the hounds of cumulus

even the Beat poets would think their poems cheerful
compared to taxi driver poets who get jumped
in their cabs with random tips–
most saying “give up, the world has no exit ramp for this”
Robert Creeley has a patch over both eyes now,
Plath is dying to stay in the institution
even Sexton thinks she wants a two-car garage

keep your motor running people
because others are shooting off their motor mouths
and exhausting the tolls
too expensive to drive the keyboards

the wonder of future
the wonder of you
put me in a trunk with the old keepsakes
and letters from Sylvia
and the poems Sexton wrote when she was good
ask Robert to come home
even with the patches
he might be able to see
what we are missing–
Stop signs pleading
to us to put a brake to the madness.