From the Berated

From the Berated


Dear,

(you)

this is: Me.

word-writer, -seer, -reader,
-lover, -mutilator (?):

who doesn't really
/fit/

inside the brackets you
b_race around the

breathed-, scrawled-, painted-
taped-words you

(hope)

to strip squish onto your own
page--worthy of only

your own
Praise.

Pat yourSelf on the back,
jerk,

since

no one else
will.


----

No one wants to read poems that no one else can understand.

My poetry--my new poetry--is about the day, the moment, the hesitance of a breath. Freezing things so that you look again, and again, and again,

at the Normal: the concrete.

The things that mean something to everyone.

No one cares how may ways you can rape the word "they" through a series of ugly sonnets that only make sense when the world is high.

So what if being the poet laureate was a weak aspiration for sell-outs. I LIKE that academia has no place for my poetry. Words are for the everyday.

the World is my everyday and God is my Audience and if all I write are Jesus-poems and listen to the hum of the sea--that's

ME.

Bite it, tear it off, sink your ugly educated fangs into the Me that Listens to the Reader of the Day--

not the reader of the classroom who loses interest
when your tweaked nose isn't pressed
against their work yet still wanders home wondering,
How can I write so you love me?

I write--Knowing, dear, that you won't.
you're not the Point.

My aim: is Truth. And your wrinkles, your callouses
are proof of your
fear
of It.


(you will never be a Capital on my Breath.)