I've lost poems
blown out of my mind
on subway stops
on acid
on coffee and computers
on cold nights
in north-west territory
where the wolves howl out their lines
oh, and I howled back
my refrain
I've lost poems
poems left like napkins
wet with coffee stains
it's just some careless spatter
of heart-blood and mind-think
just a poem strangled at birth
or scraped and dumped in a gutter
thoughtlessly aborted
and dead before it knew breath
I've lost poems
deep in the eyes of a lover
as she gasped up in my face
in the second of total surrender
Lived them, instead
and kissed my words
on the delicate moving paper
of time and her tender skin
I've lost so many poems
the weight of them drags behind me
like Marley, in his chains
I am not and will not be pardoned
but doomed, to forever remember
the greed and the selfish waste
I've lost poems
but the few I have kept
are my treasures
snapshot memories
inside white frames
This small book beside my bed
holds my life in words like pictures
holds my love
This is all I have saved
As time fades the colours
as time fades my life
peer close, can you see what I see?
This is me, in '77
I was twenty-four years old