Four poems

Loneliness, memory, poetry

i.

When I am alone
I return to my phone 
And make someone speak to me

A video-stranger, 
A foreign invasion,
Will do for company

When I hear another 
Describing something
Meaningful, I feel

Briefly aware of what’s meaningful 
to me 

ii.

The book was a memory, occupied 
By all the people it betrayed

Where I recorded my love for who,
When it was published, wouldn’t stay

It was a labor over and above 
what I would want to do 

Except that I was more afraid, 
left to my head, what I would lose.

iii.

Poetry is the part abstract enough
For me to post on Instagram
If I only wrote prose, who knows 
If I would Substack anything

Poetry is the sublime, insofar
As the secret idea is vaporized 
And what is left, just haunted air 
Shimmering in disguise

iv.

If I could just make a thousand more bucks
I’d retire, and write my book

But if I rightly recall it, the last time uttered
The sum was nine-hundred bucks smaller