Hand Written

arrows, cross outs, inserts –
the natural text of my frantic
fingers and blocked stops.
Poems resist my keyboard. Orderly
black words on white pages miss
the love making of
passion
and subtraction,
contractions
of word-birth,
struggles
of a poem
to breathe.
Careful fonts, even spacing, perfectly
straight lines make glossy stills, but
hide the messy mouthing
of poems emerging
like well-chewed dog toys.
Poems are never finished. Typed and clean,
they are merely dressed for church
after shameless Saturday nights.