Coming To Poetry
I came to poetry in desperation
my soul needing to name its wounds.
I washed my face in other’s despair
hoping their tears would ease my way back into grief.
I hid books in books
covering up poetry
in adventure, in textbooks, in romance,
knowing my face would flow with the poems,
afraid relatives would read what they had done to me
with their words.
I brought along poetry
as I ran from home to town to city and on,
hoping to highlight the darkness I brought with me,
hoping the black lining which wrapped me
in this coffin of life
would soften as I pounded word after word
against its stream of nightmares.
I laid down with poetry,
a desperate whore willing to coin her virginity away
just to feel some warmth
when the winter winds
dipped below my hills of possibilities.
I laid poetry at gravestones,
I sang it where the ocean clutches the night,
I threw it on the floor of backseats next to the used rubbers,
I blessed and cursed lovers with poem after poem
until I knew that the only child that would never leave me,
the only lover that would die with me,
was the poetry that had eaten my heart.
11/19/98
