Poetry,
It rises out of the cracks of life like puss,
Rubbing on contact with clothes and skin,
It can’t seem to heal, to dry, it keeps peeling, frothing forth,
Demanding a say, I say
It hurts, it feels like it feels to watch Macbeth kill his friend,
It hurts like Plath’s sliced thumb,
I can’t stop the pain, I can’t
Stop the poetry.
Cover the wounds, let them harden in the cold,
Prevent infection, I’m
Vulnerable, and this world hurts
When the stars shine on summer’s eve it makes me too happy,
When a man drives his semi-truck through two kilometres of bodies,
When a journalist sits on a car bomb or a gay man is thrown off a roof
In some faraway land, while
We sit and talk about Donald’s bad hair and complain about the wounds,
The scars, when
Really, it’s cold outside,
You’re hard as rock, the puss has stopped leaking,
Frozen, half-hearted thoughts and dreams like a zombie, we
Just go around and around and around.
You’re no longer vulnerable, but you’re hard. You’re lonely.
An unfeeling soul.
Take a look outside: It’s no longer winter.
There’s a global warming, a blanket of ozone peels away to reveal the sky,
Solar radiation rain.
I can’t remember the last time I smelled the rain, like really smelled it.
The collisions on my skin, they break me, the wounds pour out like dams,
I’m sticky with this poetry puss, this burgeoning wonder, this
Tearing of the curtain of my temple, my body is set free,
vulnerable, and it hurts.
Only, it’s when we are most vulnerable,
In pain, bleeding with the ugliness, the mess of this life,
In much trembling,
That God will reach out His scarred hands to embrace us
Skin collisions,
I’m in love again.