Poem of the week

I like this poem because it jumps around helter-skelter, yet has a logic -- like I believe one's mind does in your head when you're not watching.

Good Grief by Justin Chin

When did the metre become the metre, or a yard
a yard, or even an inch an inch,
so that I could take a mile, or for that matter
a centimetre or two.

Don’t go to the doctor.

Why ask for an arm, a leg but not a butt
      to fall back on? These road urges
will want to sleep in floods.

When rust crushes into iron,
like water chained to honey,
a thousand aches

                           manipulate this elaborate symphony.

Grief is accurate. Grief is not accurate.
Do you want to know the facts or do you want the details?

Here’s what you will need. Listen carefully.

Something for when you need help seeing the things close
at hand and the things far at hand.

Something to measure whether the mess was worth the sickly
pile, or even that very last mile.

Why name something when you can just point at it.
Use a laser pointer or a twig if your finger refuses

to work with your brain.
Some things should take care of themselves,

they should need you and not need you.

Not only remember, but remember
to help yourself forget

[and here I cannot read my handwriting, it is so scrawled,
      so small, but soon expands, broadening

      in its whoops and mad codes,
      its abbreviated hiccoughing,

              its hacking inadequate cursive.]