Sterile Pencil

Who put me up to it is who put a clinical touch to music.  But I apologize.  Even if the birds were asking for it.  Even if the dogs were all either growling mutts or pups tracking mud.  I’m dragging a pencil, rushing the timber, as if I knew what I did and didn’t need to breathe.  The state of things is a brush of loose eyelashes, single follicles stuck nothing.  Each page I write, I’m sorry for the littering letters and the fact that I wash my hands.