new poem : flood

New for me, I've started using visual work as an activator for my writing. They serve as exercises to get me writing if I don't have a set idea when I sit down. I've always used music but haven't found a lot lately that motivates me (though Robin Thicke, Rob Thomas and Mary J. Blige do now have my head).

With that said, I thought I'd share a poem I wrote last night along with the work, by Eric Drooker, which motivated me.

Flood

They sicken of the calm, who know the storm. --Dorothy Parker

1.
I am in my work, joyous
when the ghost of our lives together
returns

I turn, not knowing who would tap my shoulder just then
and I cannot say enough - please, I cannot go

easier to force myself out of sleep,
even refuse it in the days that follow

than to return to that moment
and give my back to the possibility

2.
I am disrespectful of borrowed things,
turn library book pages into dog ears

the pages are full of art - if they are
good works they understand:

a painter hears something,
puts those words into images

I am to remind -
the colored canvas, the book itself
they must not just speak, they must also listen

3.
glittered sand left on the stairs, on the bed
you leave these markers everywhere

on the day of the largest tornados in 50 years,
that ribbon of water between two countries

chortles - there should be no fear
those who've passed the water know already

you cannot sleep: this is nothing
the flood is still a long way coming