Another Aspect Abandoned

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

Paul Valery

We will admit that it wasn’t magic,

Some prestidigitation of the mind’s eye,

That allowed the eye of the mind

To see this blank space where blank space

has never existed.  Exclaim, yes, 

but in exclaiming, protest that, yes, 

once we had blank space,

unwritten marginalia, but come 

to terms with now its absence.  

One never praises blank space

enough, becoming instead caught

up in the space considered non-

blank, that is, all of the other 

space.  

Some of that space – 

let’s call it area 

– might stand in as a metaphor

but most of it is simply filling, 

creamy, or swirled, 

like some sidewalks 

might be filling or metaphors, 

swirled, in the hands 

of a different set of eyes.  

It is enough to make one long

for the simple times

that led to chronic modicums 

of broken metaphors

and junk-induced star-gazing.  

I am told that every line 

has purpose, that every word 

a meaning

and that blank space is the subject 

of every verse

worth its spit.  

I am lied to about the worse

things that ever happened and these self-same worst

things that ever happened may or may not

have been intentional and may or may not

have been self-inflicted but isn’t that

the story of our lives?

Look now at what we’ve made

of our area, waste of silence and re-numbering the days

or numb in our haze of sentence and chapter,

or worse, verse, we struggle to lose the purpose

that every line has, to mean every word

that blank space is said to convey.

How despair loves the political, how blank

space despairs the personal.

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved