The Truth About Paper

Sometimes a god or whomever puts lines on it     or maybe tiny squares

I never understood the tiny squares

Sometimes it feels like silk     soft enough to caress a tushie

Sometimes it's shiny like the Sears and Roebuck catalogues that hung from nails in
        old-timey outhouses

That's irony

Sometimes you roll it      pack it with herbal bliss     light it up      pass it around

Other times you create smoldering suicide tubes     misty mistakes that cause life to
        slowly evanescence

For me it's a lover who always beckons     ready to receive the demands of my pen

Never acts insulted when I scratch away words and lines I no longer like
        or put Xes across stanzas that displease me

Never acts violated by the ink I smear across its pure white brow

Always generous with its space     patient with my restless revisions and edits

Graciously it rests on my writing table     a carpet for my whims and nasty grudges

Profound below its milky surface     it waits