Compilation Poem for September 10, 2015

Fourteen years ago today
“He loved my poetry, until he knew it was about him”

She’s swaddled in my favorite color
and all the props of poetic legend —
every country has its crying tale
and rather less than half of that behind.
I never knew you — a penance for your shame.
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

I try not to look too crazy —
I exist only as a melancholy fabrication
smoking a joint on the streets of Vancouver,
a being in possession of her own heart
[unwritten line] —
nights we are hemmed to dreams.

Most birds fly at 30 miles per hour,
far from me {if you knew} — wouldn’t a fly-swatter be easier?
Eeverything burns, stubble to ash for the planting.
Love falls to the floor, threadbare and faded.
Am I a sentient being, or a fetish?
Every time my grass flames, it curls around the shadows.

It lit us from the left as we crossed the Hickman Bridge.
A deer for a pet — oh, a deer for a pet —
This is not my opinion — this is just a poem.
Who calls the bottle into question?  Ghost witch?
I’ll never let you abandon your mouth with teeth —
when there is no sound, we have the most to say.

I am a book that has been printed backwards.

Compiled by Dennis Clark