Pen pal

Cross Pen

Awake Excalibur, up to your hilt

in a stony strata of abiding

decades stacked with foreboding, sensation

of sway widest here at the pitching top

where I jockey for purchase and slap at

my pockets like a man on fire

sudden urge to jot down some notes before

the whole thing topples irresistible.

Sharpie’s and Bic’s enough for one lifetime

tawdry affairs with cheap motel quills

hand thrown two glaze green ware full to the brim

with one-off Tomahawk missiles hawking

Ray’s Heating and Cooling Twenty Four Hour

Service and pilfered office issue

sufficient to pen Shakespeare’s sonnets in

florid cursive with endless revisions.  

Fine-tuned fife with a spritely chirp balanced

on the tip of my finger, surprising

heft for the slightest of gifts, yet freighted

with portent, first nail in the coffin

of success from rueful parents or an

aunt with ironic sensibilities.

I’ll try not to think about love letters

and books never written, pleas for money

incitements to revolt, a treatise on

duality, my ninety-five theses

dormant all these years in your thin blue vein

while I compose this grocery list, fingers

burning with the heat of smoldering dreams.