feel free to suggest a better title.

also, if you're reading this and want to know when I put up a new poem, will ya press 'follow' on the right hand side of the page? It is a small matter that will make me ecstatic. :)

The Personal World is Universal Now

"There is no such thing as a perfect mirror. There is only a mirror that perfectly matches our expectations." -Orhan Pamuk

A famous author in his sixties said
that everyone, writing
characters, writes
themselves-- how one drinks
a glass of water more fitfully
when it rains and
one’s breath looks white on the window of a night train
and the first unquiet wind of winter stings one's cheek
the page rings true to it each for each

On the grass outside the lecture hall
a whippet was hunting blood alert
to the squirrel stammering his fear
in the dog’s eyes black as marbles
the recognition of ancient habits
the body sketched without wasted flesh
each and each do as they have always done

Every love like the books he spoke of
is small knowledge - a compendium of scars and misplaced hairs
each and each in time forget warm touch
leaving recalled rituals and moods

“I too am Madame Bovary”
I remind Flaubert

when I watch the small snow eke out your brow
I love the furrow of every man’s
every man has written his name in his own breath
on a night train's window
and every man erases each for each