Howard Firkin
For completeness, at whose shrine I worship
in a desultory way,
I’ve included scraps I’ve kept,
love letters to myself, pressed flowers of my fancied intellect,
and
as long as no one forces me to look at them
I like them
like them for the sad, uncomplicated, ordinary child
who thought he might be something else
who thought that thought
was something he discovered
the child who made a single, odd mistake:
who thought the cold indifference of pain was metal,
might be coined,
who thought
not much it turns out.
So, for completeness, there they are:
the letters never sent, the stories no one wrote or read,
the sometimes finished poems.
Completeness,
fed on scraps of, lies
replete.
in a desultory way,
I’ve included scraps I’ve kept,
love letters to myself, pressed flowers of my fancied intellect,
and
as long as no one forces me to look at them
I like them
like them for the sad, uncomplicated, ordinary child
who thought he might be something else
who thought that thought
was something he discovered
the child who made a single, odd mistake:
who thought the cold indifference of pain was metal,
might be coined,
who thought
not much it turns out.
So, for completeness, there they are:
the letters never sent, the stories no one wrote or read,
the sometimes finished poems.
Completeness,
fed on scraps of, lies
replete.
