The Novel's Laceration

Judge. Tell me, with or without epigraph?



To you, the one whose name I never knew

Wonder if you catch my mood
Can you feel my solitude...
-Mick Jagger


A thousand poems I have written about your beauty.
They have all gone, metamorphosed, become
Ink hearts for lonely ashtrays at old-fashioned café tables
Or jumped away from toilet-papered baskets
Leaving a trail of rotten verse down on the concrete,
Fuel for silent nights around a trashcan campfire
Whose ash shall feed the sighs of every homeless.
And yet how could I ask for it to stop,
The dancing of the pen, skin to skin on paper.
You do not know how many times a hero
Has spawned out from a lonely window-side, looking-out table,
How many mortal wounds have been the same;
Rerun of an immortal well-known story.
Out from this smoke that was never an oracle
Outpours a cloud for castles in the wind,
Fickle love of shooting stars, candle-flame guidance:
They tumble down the precipice as if made out of play-cards.
Now it is time to hide away the sheet,
The napkin, notebook, whatever was a home
For that young poem that matched the Arabian Nights,
A time to think about the evening’s work, tomorrow’s sun, next week,
When the novel shall just glide along, so peaceful,
And forget its postmodern jumps and sudden starts,
And the stupid, alarming hole in the plot
After all, means nothing.