Number one: May 23rd.

This isn't a very good first poem, if it is a poem at all--it's more like a journal entry. That's okay with me for two reasons: It frames the theme of needing improvement very nicely, and writing it kind of inspired me to do this shenanigan. (Why are there only plural shenanigans? Can I just do one big one?)

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If I write books and read and write poems,

It will not be a summer of poems.

If I draw and admire and paint, 

It will not be a summer of painting.

If I go out to find and create myself,

It will not be a summer of me.

If I create a night

putting everyone I love in the same room,

Punch-drunk, singing, in love with each other--

The ones who have never even met--

Paint the walls deep blue and dim the lights,

If I dress the room in smoke and clothe them 

In what they will wear and write the script of the funny things

They'll say and do--If I lounge myself in the arms

Of the one I would have hold me, and plan to be

The scathing, sparkling centerpiece of the night--

That will certainly not be the night.

Not once has a thing so thought-over,

Come out just how I thought it might.

But we could stop mourning the wrong,

And delight in the not being right.