'She' was a Danish lesbian, and the first woman I ever fell asleep next to...

Did the title catch your attention? I apologize, then, as it's only another poem. You know how big clumps of dust and bottle caps and Hot Wheels and pennies get caught under furniture for years and just sit there until you have occasion to move the piece, and then you get this dirty little garden of incidentals? That's what happens with the poetry I've written--it stacks up and just sits there, stuffed haphazardly into all the corners of my world, waiting to be rediscovered, or at least remembered. Most recently I found 'Stick to Poetry', a passive aggressive response to one conversation I had with a friend somewhere around the winter of 2000. (As a creative writer with a Philosophy degree, I can't seem to deviate from writing stories and lyrics and poems and dialogue that do little more than ask the question 'why' in a panoply of ways. If only I were chums with Clive Barker, I could ask him. He doesn't seem to have that problem. At any rate, here it is, slightly revised...)


Stick to Poetry

(she said)
after I had given her my life story in a nutshell
Stick to poetry, she breathed,
returning curtly from her thoughts
after I had poured my heart into a champagne glass
and offered it to her on 42nd St.,
having lay forth my plans w/ that same boldness and clarity
that often comes to one around 2am
"Stick to Poetry" she sentenced...
And left me, in the meantime,
to pick up my guts, still warm on the
slippery cement

Was it too much?
Sometimes it all just come out of me like
electric elephant droppings:
every word heavy...and charged

I have always understood the love of poetry,
but what about love for the poets?
These poor, introspective auteurs
remembered for the noise they didn't make,
the scenes of normal life they never managed to shoot,
so busy "sticking" to their pens and quills and
dark desks and quiet corners...
Kerouac to concrete
Burroughs to bottle
Dickinson to dementia

"Stick to poetry" she said and headed for the train.
"Great," I called, "thanks".
Hey...maybe if you're lucky,
I'll put you in one