Not This Stick

1.
Beautiful silver pen,
dragons circling it,
the poet Midang gave me saying
“Here, use this; write
your own poems, you have
translated plenty of mine,”
doesn’t work and never did.

“Here, write with this,”
he said, and took off
for the next world, laughing.

2.
Stick of incense, this
pen,

a twig some dog
should carry in its mouth,
prancing down the street.

Let a dog try to write poems
with this pen!

3.
Here’s a dog, strolling
in his quilted blue coat,
four arms or legs, a leash.
A dog like this
should have a cell phone too!

4.
Put me on a leash and lead me.
I want to be fed from a can,
drink from a bowl on the floor,
mark the stages of my liberation
up and down the avenue
with this pen!