New Notebook
The vast white canvas lies before me,
this cloud page, and behind,
another space, and another blind
perfect pristine alley.
I try to fill its silenced set,
at 4 am, the house still at bay,
the morning cleared of yesterday.
Today a white page yet.
White is a terrifying promise
asking only to be ruined and scratched
with these scribbles, weakly hatched,
beaten, torn, stained and aimless.
There’s nothing insane about absence.
The white page is an itch you didn’t know itched
until you gently scratch that perfect calm,
one thin line, then another seeking balm
until the crazy cross-hatched scars have torn
the onion parchment into something dryly born.
The old notebook lies in broken time
Marred by my imperfect desires
cover already dangling at the spine
pages bruised and worn as old tires.
There is only the lie of order in these words,
scarring the pure white promise.
The first of predictable betrayals waiting
in the pages behind. Just look
to the old one for a vision of what’s
to come. These pages, ruffled, fall
with crisp and breezy precision, perfect order,
a flawless drumbeat. The old pages
stick, stumble, stutter, and stomp.
The only true order is emptiness.
The only true rhyme silence.
Turn the page now.
This one’s done.
