It’s been a while since I wrote anything good enough to share. I wrote a letter poem to a friend of mine who is about to graduate and he said he liked it and he’s one of my favorite writers ever, so I’ll put it here. It might not be as good or make as much sense when someone other than who it’s about is reading it though.
I’ve been trying to write this off and on for over a year and the other day I thought up the last stanza and it made everything click.
To Adam
You tested yourself on the iron bar stretched
Between two pillars at the old Slovenian church
Doing pull ups as if they were not new and oddly easy
As you tested yourself against the newfound intoxication
Of a girl waiting back home.
You wrote poems, pulling the words out
Of the Italian landscape and your sister’s sorrow
As easily as you pulled your body against the bar
But with all the force of Sikes striking Nancy
Down in a broken wood flat on London’s west end.
You sat on the edge of a pool table spilled
With sun gently touching the leg of a girl made
Out of light and flowers, like freshly cleaned quilt.
You told her religion is a veil or a candle.
She is the gentle counterpoint
To the unspeakable places
exposed stanza by stanza, line by line
In all our hearts.