(I started losing my notebooks when I was in my teens
I’ve probably lost hundreds of them.
some were full of poems
some were tunes and chords and rehearsal notes
some were letters and grand adolescent theories
but all of them are lost
left in a bus station
or under a girlfriend’s bed
or on a park bench
thousands of poems written and lost
it’s just as well
poems are only good for a moment
like a work by Christo
created, viewed, abandoned, recycled.
now I have poems strewn all over the net
written in zeros and ones that I can’t even see
ideas last longer than paper)
all poems are lost
if they are real poems
means you can’t find
them if you look for them
you’ve heard them but
can’t remember where
you are a poem I heard
once and lost before the
echo of my birth screams
made me forget the taste
of eternity and fond sewage
in the river of poems
all poems are notes in
bottles cast to sea intrepid
fate’s own voyagers, blips
beacons of ice lightspeed
aches of hope and terror
all poems are lost
