Sky poet

Kenneth Pobo  •  Media, Pennsylvania 

My friend Tom wrote poems
in high school
for two months.
Then he stopped. Cold.
Turns out

that the last poem he wrote
made him vomit. Projectile
syllables flew out of him.
He had to clean
the mess up by himself.

That did it. Never again,
he said. When we talk on Skype,
he carefully avoids using
a simile or metaphor. Somehow,

he still writes poems
without knowing
he’s writing them.
They’re plain. A cloudy
sky is a poem too.