I wonder what it would be like
to write an entire life in poems.
Scrambled, probably. Mixed up.
Like the pages of a book
that were all torn out
then put back together.
Who knows? Certainly not me.
For what do I know of
the private life another
beyond the phone calls and
rose petals and
dusty boxes of life?
Perhaps the roses are flat
like sticky notes
and graph papered walls
filled with trees and birds
trapped in cages.
Invisible bridges burned and
heretic virgins dressed in white
wrap rose corsages around
their bleeding fingers
and weep, their inner stars
never shown
above the festering flames.
They are eating all the books: every
work of genius ever written.
The fantasy, fiction, truths
of the world
all reduced to cinders.
So we thrust out hands
into the pile of ashes
and smear war paint across
our faces.
We take up arms and start
to forget.
that is the life
of a poem-writer.