Creative Work

the crow opens the first box

what if you were wrong?

and foolish to think there’d be

anything inside?

poor form

i treat life like it’s the theater

at the hotel lobby breakfast

then call myself a god and

buy a rifle back in texas.

i throw down all my money

while i throw up on the lawn,

then bleach my broken roots

because this show must go on.

don’t you think i'm pretty?

don’t you find me fun?

bet you’d love to be my friend

by the time this sonnet’s done!

i spent the year

trying to convince the world

that i was real.

i tore my tendons

for them and stopped

making planets align. i broke

my fingers, one at a time

under their noses– bone dust

high, search for ego 

death and insistence. 

do you believe me now?

that i have become the light

refracting in your retinas? will you?

believe me now?

the same

i want to tell you

that our eyes can go

microscopic, that you could 

hold an oak leaf up 

and see the fibers 

laced through.

when was the last time

you looked so 

closely? how much time 

have you wasted

not looking? the fibers

between us run wild

now, in the muck we are

the same: atoms

held together, time again.

more and more

my   mother’s house was

the first place

i was born

before i was born 

many times

i was born

by the lake beside

the lake i wrote

your name

in rippled letters

by the lake

i know you

i know us both

i know we both

remember