Please Dismantle This Mantelpiece

Never put your only egg
In two baskets. In contrast
To the graphomaniac

You must confess to being,
Your actual existence
Has never exceeded this

Singular skull that’s written
Itself so slowly, softly,
With so many revisions

That it’s a kind of disguise,
The way a composition
That you see as sheet music

Or a trim poem on a page
Is often a kind of lie,
All the earlier versions,

All the bloodied, tangled mess
Of emergence cut away
So that someone can perform

From memory a person,
A metrical dance, a score,
Complete and seemingly whole.