“my poems are scarred with the blood of
everything i have killed to write them,
my poems are stained with the lies i have told
about where they come from,
my poems are stretched to their limits with
everything i expect them to be…
my poems fail me.
they are crass and ungraceful, they are lies and
half-told tales, they are nothing i have tried
and everything that they want, they are unruly children, and
stubborn cheaters, they are broken in what they do”

“art imitates life,” he says, eyes steady on her, “poetry is the refletion
of the poet who holds the pen”

ink stained fingers, screen-strained eyes,
mouth full of lukewarm coffee, throat gulping
back half told tales,
scarred with blood, strained with lies,
tripping over shoes and cable-cords,
crass and ungraceful,
stretched to the limit, broken at the core,
too determined to be more than she knows how,
she shakes her head, “life imitates art, it is the poems fault.”

he shakes his head too, holds his hand out,
she hands him a poem, chock full of lies
and deceit, spitting out half-told tales, strained
with omission, stained and scarred and tripping over
yarns of too many stories and no hope,
“it’s beautiful.” he says

she laughs, not beautiful, not melodic,
not church bells ringing, not birds singing,
“it could be more.”

he shrugs, “so could you.”

the poet disappears,
smoke-screen magician, double-guessing her way
into the heart of someone
somewhere
something else.

the poem lies forgotten, bleeding outward
’til it takes a shuddering last breath, thinks
not enough and is gone.

Originally published in White Wall Review 41 (2017)