Words...

... in a letter to Raisa.

Poetry is failing me.
And yet I can take up the pen
and write words, lines,
and they might even mean something—
like those digitless clocks,
hands pointing at reserved voids,
they’ll tell you the time anyway.
Time is too obvious.
These lines are, too.
With sudden spells of abstractness.
With ecstasies of imperfections.

Forgive my pen. It loves jumbled words so.
Never waits for thoughts to make a line.
And freedom and effortlessness
both are addictive.

The night is perfect too.
Perfect like the simplicity
of a truth. Perfect and true.
Perfect for singing
of wind and water.
Perfect for dancing
like wind and water.


The few free minutes will soon flow by.
This luxury of sitting here writing
will leave another lament.
The moon will soon be
turning into a sun, and
the careless freedom of this pen
won’t be stopping it.
But this page, above all, feels so right…

Even the me staring back at me,
etched in that dark window pane, knows-
the night is another failure,
another wonderful failure,
I can feel the joy of it,
at this very second this hand,
this pen and this paper can feel it,
the cold bones right under my skin
can feel it…

- Symphony
March 20, 'o8