The Poems

The poems do not
Want to be written
Because the poems
Want to
Write themselves.

Anecdotes about assholes
Robbing gas stations
While disguised as
Trees clad in
Flannel.

These things come naturally
To the poems.
They cannot be extracted
Like vanilla,
Or some other cooking product.

Fetus and phoenix
Look the same
When mouthed.
If the world
Were mute,
We’d have all sorts of pregnant ladies
Talking about birds
And old ladies sporting binoculars
Getting in heated debates with abortion groups.

This is what poems would write
If poems could write themselves.

Poems would read their last words
Before they wrote their bodies
Or ate their vegetables.

We should all be poems
And write ourselves,
Write on ourselves,
Without word counts
Or line limits.
We should fill the pages
But not be filler.

This is what poems would write
If poems could write themselves.

This is what we would write
If we knew how to write ourselves.