I no longer trust notebooks,
they are not reliable.
I have lost too many;
I grieve each one.
I cannot commit to another,
I have lost too much:
an unwritten play (I scarcely remember),
memories, too painful to bear (maybe it’s better this way),
how many sonnets waiting to be parsed?
limericks to be expunged (perhaps it’s better this way),
jokes much better than the last one,
songs waiting for melodies,
gone, irrevocably gone, vocal cords ripped
out of the spine of my time, meter’s running
out of gas and where’s my notebook?
I cannot believe I lost
               another notebook again.
                                      I pause as I write this
in my new notebook, already precious, filled with
an abundance of crisp rich tooth’d blank paper, to be
merrily creased, stained, used for every imaginable pleasure;
I reflect upon a personal dichotomy that might just
say a lot about me; I look at my notebook and ask,
“Not this time, right?” hear its flip retort,
“Like forever, whatever.”