Martin is a pencil point
I'm a stack of scrawling scribbling ink blots
This is Martin writing poetry: 24 lines
Here am I writing a short story: 24 pages
And I have a sneaking suspicion his story is better
It's nice to hold one sheet of paper
with a body and soul on it
I've got a fan of characters
and plot shimmies and blasts
If I let it go in the wind
it would be lost forever
on hedges and in gutters
and in pedestrian faces
if Martin let his go
we'd pin it down
easy as one foot stomping
one short laugh as he bends
folds it in four
sticks it in his pocket
____________________________________________
ps. the picture above is actually a photo of when Martin and I organized his book of poetry for submission: we used the entire living room floor and crawled around among the pages, rearranging--what a good feeling, to be with poems in such a tactile, physical way.
