Ideas

what is it that makes you pause
in the middle of a poem,
raise your head,
spinning from the assault
of so many words –
phrases –
little pieces of thoughts
not quite fully formed?

when someone else has written
your ideas for you one hundred times –

your ideas now –
your ideas in the future –
your ideas before you were born –

what is it that makes you
write them down for yourself,
reiterating what poets have,
from the first mind and the first mirror,
been whispering to themselves –
that which now rises from their graves
in fragments –
broken pieces of sentences
retaining just enough
of their original intention
to remind you that

life in your mind is
life in my mind

and now i can remember myself
painting my door in chaotic swirls of emotion
as you did when the thought occurred to you

that the infinite void hanging
over your pillow every night
is the same for everyone
and everyone sings to themselves
to fill the space with something because

how could so much space
be so empty?