CALL ME BELOVED

the last thing I want is to be difficult,
I’m not writing to cover things up but
to make them painfully clear. poetry
is only a tool and not a puzzle,
since I cannot hold a brush I
paint with words.

it overwhelms me – so much so
that I gave the whole venture up.
lines and ideas still came, unbidden,
so I ignored them and they went away
if only for a time.

now that I’ve tasted both sides
I still cannot say which is worse –
the ache of not writing:
uncomfortable fullness, like full lungs
at the bottom of a pool, or
the failure of writing:
when you look at your handiwork,
muddled and smeared like streaks across wet paint,
like pages left out in the rain, nothing that
a stranger could read and see
just what you saw.

you spend your days like a madman,
raving down rainy streets
yelling don’t you see don’t you see?
in your heart of hearts you know
no-one does, nobody sees the fat flakes of snow
just outside the window, the light
and the symmetry indelibly burned
into your memory and you have to tell everyone,
and that is the madness, that is the failure of writing.