Selfie After a Bad Week
I’m not going to cry all the time
or even this time. I’d like to dance
for a minute, go bowling & knock
all the pins down. Or even to crack
myself up or open. Either way will do.
Tear the stitches along the seam &
there’s my ass. I’ve got another
good pair of jeans. But really,
looks don’t matter anymore.
Not when someone took every inch
of life to the recycling bin by accident.
The life we counted on — piled up on top
of junk mail & flattened Amazon boxes.
Will we get it back? In a new form —
a duffle bag or IKEA bunk bed? If
you sleep on it; you’re bound to wake up
& find someone else’s bad dream.
Unless you never sleep on anything
but Ambien. But enough about me —
what’s up with that big heart of yours?
Have you an open chamber that I could
crawl into & stay awhile?
* * * * *
Ars Poetica
~for Catherine Barnett
I’ve been told I write too pretty —
my lines and images so beautiful,
my metaphors to die for.
Write uglier. I’m told. I say read
to the end.
I say, when I look in the mirror
I see a pretty girl. Reflect
on that a minute — on a girl
who’s been told she is pretty
enough to be a star, a Jean Harlow.
I say look in the mirror, don’t
you want to see beauty?
I paint mine on. Play
the pretty girl who rewrites herself
so frequently, I can hardly
keep up.
She says her lines beautifully.
She says my lines beautifully.
But it won’t matter.
It still gets ugly.