Poems?

Talking to a former classmate brought up the subject of poem-writing. We agreed that (at least) 75% of what gets spilled out ends up being useless. Another 10% becomes poems straight away –– good poems, bad poems, just poems. The remaining 15% is made up of this conglomerate of weird phrases and mismatched lyrical scraps. That's the interesting part.

They just lay around.

So it seems, though really once they're written down, they gain a permanence that will easily outlast the writer's short-term memory.

In my experience, they kick around in there; squeal about and jostle for room and sometimes just play it cool. And then in a month, or in two months, or in six months, or in 2 years, or in 20 years (!) they must find poetical mates, become poems of themselves, or languish in the margins of a journal.

Of course, the best part is that all of this is based upon the assumption that poems even have endings. And they don't –– as long as there's anyone else to read them, as long as some reader may impart meaning, or sort of water the soil the seed was planted in –– they just grow. They live in a life running alongside ours; or if we're doing something right, running through ours. A life of their own. And God bless 'em.