House Coffee

With a purpose, like a lung,
I stroll in the dark, like a kidney.
This morning the borough bristles with activity,
the coffee is good and Garrison Keillor is nowhere to be found.
My brain feels like a wet sponge.
So for now, in the name of Mr. Leavy’s Advance to Literacy class,
and all the classes who should read more and learn to write,
for now, for them, I write.
This daily practice,
the perambulations of a man looking for a thread.
I don’t feel the dark today, that comfy negation
which lends mock gravity to a poem
whose only real desire is lightness.
Like a student makes bricks of HD’s syllables
while reading to the class
it is almost an accidental, naïve state,
to fall into gravity’s loose, loving hold.
In praise of living,
of deciding not to destroy,
let’s move on like seagulls, freighters, trains, trucks, hitch hikers:
these images, a few of an infinity
used to describe the senses’ experience,
are culled from the dusty trousers of the dead
like a pickpocket, a thief, a good listener.

We read to make truths of our fictions.
We write to make fictions our truths.

Kevin Stack