the fears of a novice

There is something to be said for beginnings that feel more like middles, similar to poems that write themselves from the third stanza on, cross out and delete the top two. You wonder, shall I offer some sort of explanation? Have I forgotten something essential? Does this even make any sense to anyone except me? The poet will choose to not worry about these things, and realize that his prologue is better off deleted, was a mere tool to get him started.

My over-usage of commas, my immediate awareness of the awkwardness of internet blogging and the fact that I, despite self-knowledge of it, can never help but over-preface and avoid the point, often obscuring the idea that I even have a point—we can look forward to all of these things in more substantial clots of words to come. The murky definition of “point” here overwhelms me, bores others and, all in all, muddles this paragraph further.

There is a Frenchman whose jaw is wired shut in my kitchen. I just used my cell phone to return a text message that asked me to make a phone call. NPR is playing classical music through the stereo I grew up with, one that originally lived in my mother’s living room in Cherry Hill, NJ. Brooklyn is usually quiet like this on Friday nights until about eleven, when the neighbors decide to pump up the jams, let loose and cost me my already scant concentration. When I walk down the streets, I think of nothing but leaves, fallen, colored leaves. My homework waits, patiently, too patiently, for my attention.

This is the beginning of something that in the future, meaning every single solitary time from now, will have a specific aim. Right now, the strings are untuned, the soil over-turned, the lens unfocused, waiting. The pen taps, taps, taps. But the page is no longer blank. A blink. And then.

Sequins dazzle light. I offer no explanations besides these. Little windows, little mirrors, but enlarged, wonderfully huge. Gigantic, even.