Charlie Brice writes

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