Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails

By David J. Lovato

Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails gathers four poetry collections:

Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages details a narrator's struggle to find his place in the world as he drifts through parallel universes, replaces the people around him with fictional characters, scatters his poetry to the wind, and keeps the things he can't bear to lose by writing them down.

A Means to an Ens follows the last man on earth. Years after waking up to find himself seemingly alone in the world, the narrator heads out on a journey to find any sign of life in a desolate place, but is instead confronted by the ghosts of his past.

Build Yourself Better chronicles two people who meet, fall in love, fall out, and then fall apart, and what they do in the aftermath with the pieces that remain.

B-Sides and Rarities features poems originally cut from the above collections.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David J. Lovato
• Release date: Feb 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311655554

David J. Lovato

I live in Kansas City, where I spend most of my time reading, writing, or reading and writing.

Book preview

David J. Lovato

Copyright © 2014 David J. Lovato

Cover art © 2014 David J. Lovato

All rights reserved.

Contents:

At Rest in the Sea

Letters

Faded.

Sunday Calls for Cloudy Skies

Alone

Shadows and Fingerprints

The Back of the Room

Yearbook

Pages

Be There

In the House Across the Street

On the Mend

I Could Have Shined

Love on a Page

Contronym

Poetries

Afterword

At Rest in the Sea

Edgar Allan Poe once said,

The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world.

Could he have predicted it would be done to death?

That people would write it and write it until it lost all meaning?

I like to believe that he sleeps in the sea

In something like peace with his Annabel Lee

Because if he rose from his sepulchre, emerged from the waves

I’m not sure he’d like what he sees.

And of course I’m not innocent,

I write the same thing over and over again

I just write it a different way every time

And hope no one notices or at least doesn’t mind.

It isn’t a death in the literal sense,

More like a forking of roads, a departure, an end

Because everyone I see and everyone I meet

Eventually walks away from me

By writing them down, in some way they stay

But all I am left with are words on a page.

I’d write about the road, the departure, the end

But it never quite carries the weight of a friend.

I keep writing letters because darkness is better

Than brightness, at least as a theme

The ocean’s not wetter than tears once unfettered

By the loss of a beautiful thing:

A woman, a man, a faraway land

A friend only met in a dream

A loss is a loss if it’s driving its cost

If you’ve ever lost, you know what I mean.

If we all write the same thing, and keep on repeating

To those who have lost love, it still has some meaning

So maybe Poe’s still at rest in the sea

And I will carry these pages like birds within cages

Until I’m ready to set them all free.

Letters

Dear --,

Growing up I always thought you were cute

And I wished my friends would be nicer to you

It feels strange to see how pretty you grew up to be

And I’m sorry that ring on your finger keeps me from talking to you

Especially since my friends still do.

Dear --,

I swear I saw you the other day

I can’t tell for sure because I turned away

And I felt bad even though we never got past hello

Because even if I could think of what to say,

It’s always been my nature to turn away.

I don’t like being alone

But I have learned to live with it

I get lost inside these letters

And sleep among these sentences

But words can’t love me back

I can’t build a family with a paragraph

And any thoughts or ideas they may have

Are just my own I wrote down on the page looking back.

Dear --,

While everyone was fucking with my heart

You were the only one to warn me from the start

But it wasn’t anything I wanted to hear

So I’m sorry you’re the only one I wouldn’t listen to

And I thank you for being the only one to tell the truth.

Dear --,

I’m sorry I don’t reach out to you

The way I’m shy and awkward when we meet in public, too

I’m sorry I let it get to me and let you down

Even if we seem like we are far apart,

I hope you know I hold our friendship sweetly in my heart.

If I prefer to be alone

I hope that you can live with it

I get sidetracked by these letters

And spend time with these sentences

But I can’t be friends with words

You can’t build a bond with nouns and verbs

And if they cry or laugh with you,

It’s just because you wrote them to.

How cruel it is to be

A master of words who can’t feel anything.

How sad it is to see

A stack of pages are all that live with me.

Dear myself,

Why don’t you spend some time with someone else?

Who says something you didn’t pen

See the world, get on the mend

Instead of writing letters you won’t ever send.

Faded.

My favorite word

At least today

It streaks across the page

And like the ink that forms the word,

It has faded away.

A sharper sound at the start

It dulls at the end

Just like the word implies

Faded.

Something was there, but isn’t anymore

Just enough is left that it can still be traced

Like a fleeting memory, a glimpse

Of what once was but never will be again

Like summer haze rising up above the pavement

Like autumn days tracked along the streets like leaves,

Faded.

An illusion, a mirage

Just enough is left to prove it ever was

Like brumal days

Wrapped in blankets by the flames

That fade away

There they were, but now they’re gone

I have no proof, but memories remain

And someday they’ll be gone, too

Faded away, much like the rain that came

And took our love away

That turned to ice when winter showed its face

And made the autumn fade away

That cold embrace, like icy lace

Tracing everything within this place

Until we’re jaded.

Still, I know they say

Hope springs eternal.

The snow will melt and drain away

And like all else, will simply fade

Unclear now, or was it ever there?

So all we had and all we gave

Just like the ink upon the page,

Faded.

Sunday Calls for Cloudy Skies

I know you loved me

And I’d love to know you know that I loved you

But I’m a puzzle piece

And with time the sides wear off, and we just don’t fit together anymore.

I loved you, you know

I guess you’d want to know where all our wants had gone

And where it is I go

To fill the holes we made in pulling apart from each other

And pulling each other apart

I’m not here to make amends

Or make excuses or repent

I just want you to know

We may have gone our separate ways

Washed away our sunny days

Burned the bridge and closed the road

Used rotting wood to build new homes

But I’ll still hang your picture in the hallway.