Ah, poems from when I was in my teens and twenties.  Some are not bad; it’s always a little embarrassing to look back at things I thought were SO GREAT and realize that they’re okay but not THE GREATEST THING EVER.  The confidence of youth.

 

At Home In The Body

Resident of a half-vacant flat

I watch the mirror for signs

Of use:  who to let in, what

To see.  The postal label peels.

I can’t quite read the letters.

Smoother corners than my room is worn to

Echo upwards in the dull air.

I am a small thing hunched over

A warmth that outlines my life.

I don’t move much.

The windows fall like sunlight

Across the room.  The small thing

Extends a hand, imagines bones

The bars of light shift slightly.

We are property, and property

Is theft:  I cannot cotton the eaves

To shut out sounds of ownership.

Slowly,

Assuredly,

Footfalls rise

On the neglected stair.

 

Snow Fences

Inside the letters there is no weather.

The deer startle Joanna in the backseat

There on the edge they await her cry.

Don’t you realize it’s the first snow?

High was we are, who knows the others

Seeing what we see.

Inside the words fit like a glove

So frozen it cannot write.

Until I asked, who knew what the fences were for?

Keeping nothing in or out, like blown tires on the road’s shoulder

Explaining why we drive

Until we are driven.

 

I Worry Over Small Words

I worry over small words

To make them speak to you

As if I cared.

 

In the light I follow birds

That croak of all things new

I worry over small words

Because I want them heard

The false ones and the true

As if I cared.

 

Apart from what’s occurred

I look for things to do.

I worry over small words

To make them speak to you

As if I cared.