I still use the pen you told me to.
I still use the pen you told me to
In passing, so many years ago.
Its iris-bottom flits over me
Ensuring analog, inky-loops
Of words that will never reach your ear.
Your eyes live in its wonted body
Slightly bent and warm in my right hand
Like a taut hose waiting for release,
I jerk down to find you in liquid.
The legal pad yellow pages buck.
Inky-tips dry in the battlefields
Of wars we won’t continue or end,
I wage on, guessing the nascent words
You frankenstein in pens I won’t know.
Between grim prayers the ink clabbers,
I walked down our hometown like a fox
With your hand tucked in my right pocket,
And saw the coffee shop we’d frequent.
I imagined you on the terrace,
And licked away my sour-dry lips.
Your laugh rings in the periphery
And C-major’s tonic returns home.
My hand goes up to your hilt to write
The honeyed sound I scarce remember
Just to find my palm suffused in ink.
It drips down my thigh, and I curse it
As it slips away from my pocket.
Your furrowed brow possesses me there:
On the concrete you were meant to walk,
As I chase a pen-top that won’t click shut.