25. Life footnotes 
Das
a blow on the table but the poem does not scream.
spit on paper but the verses do not flow.
An image comes over as a neap tide, and to talk
imagining you naked. It is not a pupil
following the ringing of the words. Neither
someone who shuffles cards and memorabilia
as you pray for a lucky hand. No.
The breath comes to you after having dodged
thousands of poets. In less than a second
've been in houses, holidays, early mornings,
with the same joy, with the same verve.
You write like you dance, unsafe and unregulated,
chew each sentence until you toothache.
is difficult to know if your tears were of sorrow or joy.
're used to seeing things this way,
to return the meat, promises the perfect summer
through language. For every story
have cavities and crevices, masks turned inwards,
their own story within the story. Because
quietly, closing a window,
you see yourself growing old suddenly. Your fingerprints
revived in the bare backs you've loved.
Your tears of pain, your laughter radiating EVP
are living in basements and rooms where once
did you not see your image in the mirror though
swore to be there, loving, suffering, silent, moving
. Trade it all for a verse
to boil to a different temperature, which melts
with the past and future simultaneously.
think in a new poem and imagine yourself lifting weights
in an Olympic final, or in a hospital bed with tubes
throat, or pulling the heart
in the wrong container. There's something I've understood
after so many years. There are words that explode in your ears
and breathe on their own, and when they run down your arm
through an artery mysterious, they arrive in your hand
and slide like beads through your fingers, you feel
after searching for something you did not want to find
've found something that was not looking. ___________________________________________
