If Gusts of Wind Bring Fire Then Tell Them

I don’t want to make poems
That seem like they know more
Than things of names could know,

But who am I to tell
These lines what they might say?
It’s just that I have read

Wise poems and more wise poems
Whose small lives in their drapes
Were short and bleak and sad.

I am a small life here
In these lines or in back
Of them. Psst. We’re not wise.

The Beast

Words are one thing. Beast is else.
Heart is else. Ah, back to words,

Though, now, aren’t we? Which is best—
Heart, core, soul, flesh? What’s the word

That best fits the bit of beast
That’s not words? You want to say

That you can tell when the heart
Means well, when what the mouth says

May be wrong or cruel, or worse
In what it means or could mean

Than what the beast, what the flesh
Wants to say, or longs to say,

Or, while we’re at it, what it
Means to say. What the words mean,

The ones that were said, may be
One thing, not one the beast means.

Good Stuff

Strange word, stuff.
What-not. Cloth
To poke cloth

Full of. Stuff.
Wad. Stock. Plug.
Words are stuff.

Dreams are stuff
Made of us.
Stop. Just stop.