To the Espresso I Drank at Last night’s Poetry Reading
This morning I wrote the best poem of my life,
the poem I've always wanted to write, but never could
because my brain just doesn't put words together like that.
But this morning, I found those words
But this morning, I found those words
And I credit you with the conception.
Because of you, I couldn't get to sleep when I got home last night
so I sat up and watched some movie-
I remember only enough about it to know that it provided the thread
from which my dreams, when they finally came, were woven.
Danger and rescue, loyalty, betrayal and then redemption:
they were all there, then shattered, as dreams so often are, by waking.
When I opened my eyes in the darkness of a winter's dawn
the dream was broken, but the pieces floated and spun and suddenly merged
and there it was- a poem, the poem of my life,
a master work
patched together from the colored remains of a dream,
a poem like real poets write,
with sharp imagery as stark as bare bones glinting in the moonlight,
and every word drawn in blood and ice.
I lay back and it unspooled across my brain
a movie of words narrated by an inner voice I thought spoke only to other people
with metaphors heaped bright and generous like Christmas morning.
There was one about the senselessness of crying over whiskey spilled
across a bar that you know you should have left an hour ago…
but it was worded better than that somehow.
The poem was in the form of a note left for the police
explaining why the writer had to flee the scene of a crime they witnessed but did not commit,
an act they would have done, though- wanted to, but never did,
did not expect to be believed about and could not bear the blame for-
don't you see- it was a metaphor in itself
for the poetry that I hear all around me, and think
"That's how my poems are supposed to sound.
That's how I"m supposed to write"
but I never do
because instead of the firm, glistening clay of dreams and metaphor
I build with dry sand
shapeless mounds of words that mean to be a grand edifice,
but slump across the mental landscape
then slide and drift to nothing.
But there it was this morning, the right kind of poem,
all sharp planes and acute, bitter angles,
shouting itself, stacatto and impassioned across my brain.
And all I had to do was get up and write it down…
but it needed a powerful conclusion, and there were still a few rough edges,
lines that I found my brain running over and over, stroking, worrying,
trying to file down clean and sharp
and since the poem was born from my dreams, it was easy to make myself believe
that if I just went back to sleep
I could make it perfect,
a child born beautiful, but a moment too soon
returned to the waters of its creation to allow its lungs to mature
in preparation for its first breath in the world.
I know.
but self deception comes easily on dark mornings
and a thousand opportunities are lost in the time between the alarm's first call
and feet finding the floor.
I closed my eyes again but the words kept pushing, shouting,
and in unfocused sleep they lost their aim
and became, not tools to delicately refine my newly discovered clay
but knives, stabbing and breaking with frustrated longing,
bullets sprayed from the machine gun of last night's movie
and when I woke again from my troubled, bloody nap
all that remained of the poem I always wanted to write
was the tattered corpse of subject
and glittering bits of imagery,
dust slowly drifting ground-ward
through the ticking silence of bullet-shocked air.
Tracy Meisky is a poet, writer, singer, songwriter and all-around boat rocker from way back. Feel free to look around, but if you break it, you bought it.