May 18-24, 2015: Paul m. Strohm and William Taylor Jr.

Full Stop

.Before a period there may be a sentence, but
text expressing a complete thought ends with a stop.
?You ask. I really don’t know! It is written so:
words in proper relationship are meaningful-
Beautiful the on hillside trees doesn’t make sense
.Before a period everything must be arranged,
subject and object need a verb. Assertion!
No sentence can be formed without the verb.
One isn’t born either transitive or intransitive,
it’s a use choice for the action word. Is or is not,
it’s sort of a natural attribute, but not a compliment.
How one is used explains one’s place in the world,
though few are either always one or the other.
See lie and lay, sit and set, rise and raise, please stop.
I’ve lost my train of thought completely.
Am I the doer of the action or receiver, whatever,
you get my point, so here’s a perfect time to stop..

Poems to the Moon

There’s a Midwestern girl with a beauty
as cold and as hard as a star’s,

and like a star she burns
all faraway
and gone.

Sometimes I write poems for her.

She writes poems, too.

She wouldn’t write a poem for me,
not if she were begged.
Not if she were tortured,
not if she were paid.

Well,
maybe if she were paid.

There’s a girl down south
who follows her heart back and forth
across the miles like a vagabond.

Even now she’s driving
her beat up truck
back to her mother’s place
crying all the way,

her whole life stuffed
in a garbage bag
tossed in the back.

Sometimes she writes poems for me.

I don’t write poems for her,
unless you count this one.

I tell myself that’s just the way of things
and it’s neither here nor there.

Sometimes I get drunk
and write poems to the moon

and the moon writes poems for nobody.