It's hard rereading.

You can reread your history
or your notes on physics,
the life of Marie Antoinette
or the dead Mayan mystics,
but you can't reread
your own poetry.

Why not?

When you read anything but
the things you have scribed down,
the emotions don't fly off the page
or take your heart to town,
high on the feeling that
rereading your own poetry brings.

But how?

My poems are usually written
about loves I once had
and that meant the world
until they soured into bad.
These vent sessions don't normally rhyme,
and take lots of time to write.
But I still reread them.

Terrible as they are,
guilty as they make me feel,
I reread.
and reread.
      and reread.
             and reread.
                    and reread.

My whole being feels stuck
on the bottom of someone's shoe;
forced to go down the path I don't want,
sticking to the past,
stuck to the future,
and unable to enjoy the present
presented by the present present.

*rereads