"my soul to keep"
this prayer
elegant, simple complexity,
comes me haunting,
every evening,
this notion,
a faint ghosting,
repeatedly reappearing
and nightly leaving,
disappointed,
from between my crumpled, sweaty bedsheets,
departing with a demanding unsatisfied, incessant,
coated with a diabolical, unfeigned challenge -
write of me,
relentlessly commanding,
right me
only,
no notions,
come realized,
no poem body, resolved solutions,
are easy offered up
your inner voices,
fettered and deterred,
begging you,
screaming,
this one,
defer, defer,
for better days,
for better poets,
who require
no assembly instructions
cannot improve upon it
my distress, sensed;
the lady of the house,
over the shoulder peering,
sees the moody poem title that
has self-selected to core this poet's core,
for endless torture,
raining down ruinous lamentation
she, ever softly spoken
"good man,
your soul,
your poems -
both mine to take
and
mine to keep
this title,
this poetic obligation
fulfillingly, fittingly,
my responsibility
mine to write
mine to keep
mine to right
mine to mine
for its
bejeweled contemplations
render easily unto me
what I have Caesarean seized,
pried lovingly and forcibly
from thee within
though seemingly rightfully thine,
title has passed,
legally, tenderly,
into your lover's arms
banish poet thine troubled assembled,
ensemble senses,
this particular poem's journey
and the soul that bears it,
released and relieved,
for now,
mine to take,
mine to keep,
and
thy soul,
in mine to dwell,
and
mine to complete"
~
Nowe I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take
~