poem/nights like this
I am only ever a poet on nights like this,
on nights
.
when the moon inhabits my blood like a ghost,
and the sepia fingers of bourbon or wine
or some other tangible spirit spread
.
through my heart like jasmine,
vines in my veins as the flowers pop up
as poetry.
.
Safe as vinegar.
.
Once, I was an all-hours poet,
star-tongued and raw in my words
as a bone splitting skin; I was
.
beholden to the grief of sleepless nights, the grief
of sixteen years that knew too much and not enough,
a melancholic bruise that lived
.
in fingertips aching for ink, pens, keys,
the words in my skin
worn as tears and the blemishes
.
of love.
.
I knew I was doomed; I knew
the poetry was a madness, that I wrote
like sonar in the trench-depths,
.
every verse an eyeless eye that lead
through silence, under the hard red glass
of unrequited lust; I knew
.
that if I were happy, the words would flee
like foxes before the hunting-horn –
.
and I was right.
.
These days, I try to summon the same old pains
like ifrit or genii worn into shadows
by too much use, as thin as old scarves
.
in daylight. I do not regret my joys,
those gleaming saviour-truths that defend
me against the grief I thought would claim me – but
.
there are times, even now, when I miss
the terrible clarity of drowning,
looking up at the world and knowing the air that bubbled
.
from my bruising lungs was a window
I could look through only once –
.
and so, there are nights like this,
.
when I can recapture with age and art
what youth endured by force, and the words
come flowing out in the same blue rhythm, the same
.
second heartbeat, bumping between
the plastic glyph and the fingerprint
.
and pinning my soul to the gleaming screen
like a butterfly pinned to museum felt:
preserved and glazed and beautiful
.
but dead
as last year’s dreams.
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razziecat said:
Brava.
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