In December, I read Patti Smith’s M Train and Just Kids. In both books, I was impressed by her writing and dedication to the creative life.

Here are two found poems from M Train.

 

 

What We Want, Take 209

 

We want things we cannot have.

We seek to reclaim a certain

Moment, sound, sensation.

 

I want to hear my mother’s voice.

I want to see my children as children.

Hands small, feet swift.

 

Everything changes.

Boy grown, father dead,

Daughter taller than me,

Weeping from a bad dream.

 

Please stay forever,

I say to the things I know. 

Don’t go. Don’t grow.

 

— Patti Smith (from M Train)

 

My Pen

 

How did we get so damn old?

I say this to my joints, my ironclad hair.

 

Now I am older than my love,

My departed friends.

 

Perhaps I will live so long 

The New York Publish Library 

 

Will be obliged to hand over

The walking stick of Virginia Woolf.

 

I would cherish it for her

And the stones in her pocket.

 

But I would also keep on living,

Refusing to surrender my pen.

 

—    Patti Smith (from M Train)