A poem full of lies

The other day, I went into a bookstore with a friend who was looking for something. She didn't find it, but I bought something that I've been meaning to buy, and just never did: Matthew Zapruder's second book of poems, The Pajamaist. I saw Zapruder read my sophomore year (I think) in college; we share an alma mater. I stupidly didn't buy the book (American Linden) he was reading from. But I thought I'd share some excerpts (from the beginning and the end) from a poem called "Haiku," which isn't...well, not really. I guess I would say the syllabic structure approximates haiku. Anyway. These poems are being posted kind of as they organically remind me of my life, or vice versa. It's very self-directed, as usual.

from "Haiku" by Matthew Zapruder

Yesterday for you
I wrote a poem so full
of lies it woke me
stunned like someone
bitten in the middle of the night
or a bird that just
smashed into a very clean window.
Now it's so early
it's still night
and this time I'm hardly
trying at all, holding carefully
in my palms
the knowledge that
I don't know anything about you.
...
You keep sleeping
and I'll stop trying
to decide if it's better
to change other people
or how they see us,
or what's more
urgent and futile,
to unlock
or to invent the past.

from The Pajamist by Matthew Zapruder. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2006.