after a sleepless night
spent with a thousand thoughts
about the futility
of dwelling on your failings

the seven a.m. sky sings of
deep-blue potential,
partially hidden by hot breath
exhaled into cold air

the world feels inviting,
soft and forgivable
despite what the papers tell you,

the uneven hop-scotch court,
scrawled in some child’s earnest hand,
and covered in cigarette butts
seems beautiful . . .
or at least poetic

if your mind is adept,
you can find the proper frame

any moment can be magic
each moment is equally
ephemeral, transitory,
priceless and then gone

i saw what could have been the love of my life,
a beautiful face staring out through glass in a passing car,
framed by the reflected convergence
of telephone-wires and tennis-shoes,
bound in some by-gone moment
that may have been magic,
a statement of release into flight

i’d swear there was something wistful in her eyes
but she was gone so quickly;
the force of her passing drew wrinkled refuse
into a brief ungainly dance

but in this poem there’s been a thread left missing . . .

i opened the door this morning with a mission,
my eyes on a prize that’s been
frightening me for no good reason

it’s just that when your fondest dreams
would overthrow most of the established order
by erasing its need . . .

they look so fragile,
lying on the ground in chalk,
and it’s terrifying
to leave them
where they might be found

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 12th, 2006 at 12:55 pm and is filed under indiscriminate, poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.