I can't count the number
of times I was told not to cry
by my father.
He'd say “real men don't cry” in
a sand-paper voice,
turn and walk back into the kitchen.
I think I was 14 or 15
when I discovered poetry:
one big pulsating
heart beating against the
chest like the roar of a cannon.
It's raw, more jagged than
a broken nail on a chalkboard,
a rusty nail contorting itself
in the wood.
But there's a certain
music in it too-
like the singing
of a jay.
And sometimes it allows you to cry,
a cup held under a spigot.
I normally hold those moments back
and complete the daily motions.
Yet eventually the levees break
regardless of the thickness of your concrete.
It pours from the hole.
The sentences get moist,
and the ink transforms into black mud
and the page turns
into a crystal clear blue lagoon,
letting you see what lies
in the trenches.