The French poet Paul Valery said that a poem is never finished, only abandonded, and this is something I’ve certainly come to agree with over the years. Poetry is all about playing with words, playing with language, and play done properly is a process, not an end in itself. All the great poems in all the great languages could have been just a little different had the poet decided to just spend another few hours or minutes and change few things. Yet at some stage we need to abandon and move on, so here’s a poem I think I can justly abandon, as I have others to work on, and need to keep getting them up here to afford myself some means of motivation 🙂

So this one came into my head while I was sitting on a bus (going to work for the last time as it happens, I have now left that job and am engrossed in creative projects!), looking at a woman frantically applying her makeup in a mirror as the bus jerked and rumbled, and these lines came to mind

Morning Bus Ride

Beauty, its question marks
Curled by the mirror, too full of sun
And memories of once forever desire.

A statue with broken eyes, she
Pouts and pores over her image,
And puzzled will makes dark analysis

As deep as zero and dark as depth;
Until the bell rings and we pause and
Her hair scatters atoms through light.

All universes die on the commute
Through morning choked
By the tendrils of enterprise.

Destinations reached we file off
One by one, to different feelings,
To unfathomable mysteries of pain.