Said the pen to the page
written by: Gavin Haycock
@poetry_pieces
This business of words.
These suitcases we throw from our high windows, unbuckled.
They fall like locusts, or snow, or even better like phone calls
before dawn from plastic red cradles we no longer remember
cupped in our hands to receive watery whispers
a series of slow-motion knots, a Norse code walking out of the sea.
I am distracted as one word fights its way over another.
Together, they want to bleed their way into a useless page.
ignoring the spell of gravity, her triumphant expectation
her willingness to wait, a sweet taste in her mouth
as if bound to become a legacy, a time ultimately for knowing.
I sometimes forget to recall things not to say …
You say this is all my business.
I confess to nothing, not even stains leaking with age from a red pen
smeared across clothes falling, shoes left by the tomb, husks of insects,
or even a fasting embraced with a quiet knowing
as if to trigger some kind of harvest
before fall comes with its forests of solitude.
Anyway, these basket cases as you called them, swollen with letters, curdling
had been in the attic with their congregations of dust
their mannequin gifts of copper and leather, their requiems
as if words could be counted out like tiny glistening scales
plucked from a dead fish, with only its one eye left to reason
I sometimes forget to salvage what might really have been written.
- Distance - January 21, 2022
- Afloat - August 1, 2020
- Comfort Of Strangers - January 30, 2019
