there are things I'm going to tell you
that,
(taken out of context)
will make me seem afraid
and slightly desperate.
(I am.)
there are people
who will take words
a. at face value
b. with all the connotations
implied. I want
to free my words from mundane dictionary denotations,
from the limitations of what they're used to convey
carve them on Ozymandias's obelisk in the middle of the
sand-blown desert
and let them stand alone against the wind. but
I can only act in metaphor.
you know?
to get close enough to say these things
and to have them mean
anything at all
means sitting on the bottom rung
head against the haystack in your father's cousin's barn
panting, out of breath,
bare chests open and exposed,
holding fast against the last splinter of light as it's creeping towards the door,
gasping out the secret, desperate struggles of our darkest-every-waking hours.
The bad days when temptation takes hold of imagination
and swan dives off a cliff.
There aren't words for these kind of things,
and your father's cousin's barn, well,
most of the time it doesn't exist. Still, we try
to speak to whoever will listen
about what it is to be human
and hope to God they understand,
Still we strive for immortality
(if only metaphorically)
with little words on blank white pages,
one-way windows to the strange, silent world we only let strangers see
imperfectly
when we aren't looking. |
Submission Name: why confessional poetry is bullshit
