Eclipse-ing the Ending

fantasy landscape by guille

Eclipse-ing the Ending


Landfills are full
---of discarded poems

Lines left in notebooks
past expiration date of enabling
unable to find a hook, or hitch a ride
---into a verse,
their thumb grown tired, card
board plea faded and flown
on the last breeze

Look at their eyes as they watch others,
previous neighbors on these pages,
---roll by, mouthing "get a job"
or couplets lips pressed, hearts banging
metre in rhythm, knowing they too
---felt that love once, ink still wet

What, what happened
Don't ask them, they never saw it coming,
dreaming a poet tonguing them on stage
one day, and then---

Some lover lost their way, gave up, put
the pen down forever, decided it was
no longer worth it to bend words into
shape, when they only got broken or

Deciding it best to speak only when spoken
to, so lived on in silence, worse yet along came
something better, fancy words with just the right
number of syllables, leaving them humiliated
at missed publications,
---trash, good for nothing

I gather them around my ankles,
piles higher than mountains, slide down them
on my stomach, roll, revel in their inadequacies
stitch them in a quilt so they connect,
and tell their story,
---i rap them, round my body

to keep warm at night, inviting a party
to join in, under them
---cause these words are never forgotten

but abandoned, and one day when all the burned,
torn, trashed, flushed, beaten, shredded for being
shallow, clumsy, sentimental, silly or unoriginal,
are in place, i will hang them
---from the moon, and no one

NO ONE

will understand, why they can't help but smile
as tears roll down their cheeks.

Brian Miller

Posted over on his site Way Station One
Listed as #2 over on dVerese Poets--Poetics