On Happier Lawns, XIX

I shake a notebook of empty
pages and say, It’s all in here   
Every word of it    Dead dogs and stolen
property    Embraced
debauchery    For 35 years I had
no story to tell    Only words
in need of form    Every breath
a bomb    An infinite
space to fill    I see now that death
is just an idea    A very real
idea    As much an ethos as
aesthetic    Textured
sadness    Language etched
into fiber optics    Which is to say, light

From You're Gonna Miss Me When You're Bored (Barrelhouse Books, 2014) by Justin Marks. Copyright © 2014 by Justin Marks. Used with permission of the author.