New Notebook

I am not proud
that I rip off notebook pages
unsatisfied not with the content
but the handwriting

but this is the way the world is, too,

and although I can't say that I don't regret
the lives I've given up in the wind
more a papercut than paper
thin and soaked
empty space for the most part
skin and lines not blackened adequately
in battlefields and lovebeds--

but this is the way the world is, you say,
I could've been the solitary weak page
in the manuscript of an august masterpiece
not edited off, not quoted
while those pressed against me
would be caressed into immortality
by the generations of beauty.