I’ll pick up this old pock-marked pen –
My teeth have gone its length and back –
And try my best to write again.
Yet every time I try, I track
The same ideas, the same sincere
But ultimately fruitless lines:
I climb the limbs of trees I’ve scaled for years,
Their roots less deep than they appear,
Their trunks still snaked with winding vines.
I dig the dusty cardboard case,
Spin records on my fingertips
And flinch each time the needle slips.
Their revolutions circle back to trace
The grooves that settled in the wax.
Some revolution, huh? If it repeats
And reproduces all the pops and cracks
But feels so obsolete.
Despite myself, I am once more
Holding the pen and writing down
A set of words that you’ll adore.
I’m meters from my goals, my fingers sore,
And I’d hate to be caught without my nouns
And adjectives and verbs and thoughts –
Objectives pre-disturbed by sloth and rot –
To be mistaken with ideas I’m not.
August 8
