I wanted to write a poem about sex.
Because I’m a boy.  But it’s not
any more, about that.

I wanted to write a poem about distance.
Because it’s real.  And I’ve been there
before.  And that’s why

I wanted to write about fear.
And cycles.  And habitual inclination
to the unobtainable.

I wanted to write about love.
But we have, and we have not, and too often
we lose.  

I wanted to write a novel (laugh here)
so instead, I wrote
this

(pause here)

                There’s a beating of wings in cacophonous night, and I’m not sure
                if it’s coming or if it’s going or if the trees in the leaves’ shudder are
               memories of fixed winters, or recent years, or wooden gears
               grinding metal, throwing redyelloworange, whiteandblack sparks
              sapping sepia of its magick, or our spirits, or the gods of substance
              or if no more these things than the things
              cast inside, interrupting, disrupting, unravelling and breaking, fighting
              outer gravity with a force, an internal divorce with
              myself—just the passing of wings without song, or a bird, to direct.

(pause here)

I wrote this
because it’s you, and its me
and I’m a man and it’s true

that I’ve never wanted
to write anything
more.    

–josephallennichols–