Let the Poems Begin

Something struck as the death of poet laurette John Ashbery. The Newshour did a great piece on him last night and it inspired what I'm hoping will be weekly poems. We'll see.

The work I hope to write will about taking the little moments and seeing the profundity or the complexity. And it'll hopefully take his "difficult work" and from that, I hope I can steal the thunder and make mine more robust, more compelling.

Here's the first efforts:

Why We Text, or 

Rage in the Phone Receiver

The rage from you on the phone the other night.

Wow.
I remember, then I forget, how we are just not a relationship anymore.

But at the same time, we turn to each other and say,
"You are really the only one I can have these conversations with."

And we pause. We reflect in real time and we think,

"Yeah. True."
So how do I give you space to be raging on the phone

Miles away from here. From me?

We are two now and have been for so long.

There's really very little room for patching things up.

When you think about it. To consider otherwise, 

Well, I'm not so sure that's fair.

Irreconcilable difference only mean something when I 

Can still smell you in the shirt I kept of yours from 17 years ago.

But there's no smell there. 

The nose and the mind and the amnesia.

We're really quite lucky, when you think about it. 

I think it's a quirk in the pattern. You still buy the dress 

Because it still looks soon, in spite of the seam not matching up quite right.

It's why we text.

So we don't have to feel the nerve, the anguish of that lost life 

We could never live after the break.

The break that allowed us to breathe again after 15 years of youth.

How do you move on at 34?

You 

Just 

Move

And the sound of the movement rustles like a child hiding in the curtains

And it giggles a little thinking it's getting away with something clever.

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