That’s how many poems I’ve posted
here. Doesn’t include how many I’ve posted
elsewhere — in other sites, in my old
notebooks — but I’ll bet it’s over 10,000;

poems to tell the truth or to lie
realistically or not about my life or
someone else’s — a sort of shadow person
made of my shades, or not.

He is genderless, except he can’t be;
he is ageless, though he’s as old as I am,
maybe a little younger, maybe a lot younger —
I don’t know. I used to know him better

than I do now. I do not trust him
or his memory anymore. He’s scrappy
unless he’s full of cowardice; he fights
for what is true unless he fails before truth.

I sit a long time today with knowledge
of him as he snickers behind my back;
either that or he howls distantly in the weeds
behind the house; he is most often a silent

being, with no more than my say-so
to keep him alive. He haunts me; sits
in each poem, each song, each word I write.
Poem 8580, for instance; it will be

all about him, I swear. In fact it is;
this is that poem and if he is like
a bullet drop of mercury on a shiny floor
that is what I will say, and that is what I say.

There are no details to address. There are no
figures of speech, no fancy terms; no words
to shape him, to follow his outlines,
to trace him perfectly. Poem 8580,

in fact, is a ghost as he is a ghost.
He slinks away but not too far.
He is waiting until I catch him again. He is
a shadow, just a shadow, a shadow in a poem.

““““““““““““““
onward,
T