i

Here’s a poet
who hates to see
self in a mirror
Too much gray
Too many lines

Not as fine
as a clock
or calendar
though all three remind
of the finitude
of time
time
time

ii

Who says 
poeming is careering
how does it trump (no pun)
a job

I used to write truths for print (and was good [not great]) 
Now I only write to learn
and every lesson burns
with kindling left unlearned
 
iii

Frost
or Warren
or Heaney
or Thomas
(not I)

It’s not my place
to poem of place 
my roots so rotted as the suburbs

my diction
so much fiction
or just plain tired

(((Truth)))

Then what
and how
is this
careering 

 iv

Back to that blasted mirror
reflecting more than gray & lines

so little time
to change the endgame

(or    with the endgame just the same    unfinish
the finished)

rewrite the rhyme
however little the final verse
may rhyme

Damn time