for patrick

I wrote this when I was 27. It seems like an eternity ago. Or yesterday. I've finally compiled and edited (Thanks, Brian!) most all of my poems from yesteryear to tomorrow, but I'm not sure what to do with them now. Except post them every once in awhile for strangers and friends. It's fun for now.


NO!
We are not lucky
There is no poem only
Jealous pride and anger
And not even an
Exclamation!
In the whole story-
Yours so different than mine
where it got all confused
and misinterpreted
as poetry
expecting too much
from metaphors

And why did you
Conjugate the verbs of my mind
and not the curves of my body?
At least the other way around
Would have been an
Exclamation! And
Not
An interrogative.

All I have is a fragment
Not even enough for a poem
Or a sentence

I hear echoes
Your words
I remember my dreams
You in them
The last one
You riding away from me
In some great big tractor-like machine
And you waving goodbye and me
left to harvest
the fragments

help me
to create a period now,
that I may begin a new sentence
with a Capitol letter

OUCH! Points hurt, but
are as necessary as
apologies