13 Ways of Poetry

            1
The stuff of poetry is common as rain,
hanging clothes to dry, pulling weeds,
clipping nails in perfect moons,
digging in a real garden. 
You fill your head with it,
carry it around for days,
wait for it to find meaning,
then give it up to the page, the reader,
the girl gathering daylight.

            2
The poems come like floods,
falling where they want to,
unpredictably, not there at all
when they’re gone.

            3
This poem wants to explore
the space we live in,
save everything worth saving,
fill the void between us.

            4
I wait for the silence
to admit vibration of moth wings,
hum of wind, barely recognizable
sound of muse whispering in ears.

            5
There is not a single answer
to this poem, a single way
to write, read, pronounce it.
This poem wants to press
its face against your skin,
enter the stream of your heart pumping,
suck at the marrow of your soul.

            6
I write in two notebooks now,
marry one half-written poem
to another and raise their bastard son
on nothing but revision.

            7
This poem will not
redeem your childhood,
fix your marriage,
change your life,
vindicate anything.
It will try to make you think,
do, or feel something.
It thinks it has something to say.
It wants you to listen.

            8
There must be a reason I can’t stand
my nails when writing.
Always I bite them down to stubs,
rough mastication of what used to be skin,
bloodless cannibalism,
desperate rumination of a past
I can chew on but never quite digest.

            9
No story’s climax,
no ballet’s grand finale,
the poet misses the music’s crescendo
like the starling his arms.

            10
This poem set off
one night on its own.
I haven’t heard from it since.

            11
Without poetry
what would we do
with all these words
keeping us up at night

            12
You have to feel deeply about this.
You have to want to know the story
behind each face.  None of this
should be boring. Even sitting
in your own skin you still have to care
how each step taken comes out.
All of this still has to matter,
and not because you’re trying
to please anyone but yourself.
You have to pray when your eyelashes
close their necessary second
it’ll still be there when they open.

            13
The only lid I heard
was a coffin -- the sound
of this poem closing.

Existential Canonization

One has to wonder if Tim Peeler
has ever said or done a mean
thing, ever come up short
of expectations, gotten lost,
kicked the dog, forgotten a birthday,
anniversary, simply run out of time.

He studies the mediocre poet
with a kind eye, nothing but good
things to say, a supportive pat
on the back more to hold him up
than condescend.  He smiles sincerely,
thinking any poem is better than none at all.

I read his book again and know
immediately every character as if
his past were my own and not only know them,
but know what it’s like to be them,
the ones who never quite make it to the end,
who never give up walking with head held high.

One might could say he drinks too much,
stays up too late, watches too many
games, commits his share of sins
of self-indulgence, will only be canonized
for humility, sacrifice, paving the way
by tramping down unfertile soil.