Here’s a poem,
unlike my others
that repeat metaphor
after masquerading metaphor,
in attempt to try and hide
the fact that these
are the very words that
eat, eat, eat
away at me.
I fumble with my hands,
tired and achy from wringing
and I use them to rub my eyes,
tired and achy from staying awake
all night, almost every night,
trying to figuratively
describe myself
and the way I feel
in fancy words or rhymes
set up in stanzas meant to
break hearts or pluck smiles
from your lips and
make them reach your eyes.
I’m doing it now, with this
wording, and the way I
skip to a new line-
finishing a thought,
as if a brief pause
will bring out an otherwise
unrecognizable elegance.
I hide behind my words
of the stars, the moon, the sun,
old men, old hearts, old love,
and I’m no more of a writer
if I say that my eyes
are but the golden hue
of the whiskey that sad, sad
man at the bar
tipped back for his wife- gone.
I’m no more of a writer
if I say that the sun
slipped a note below my door
and I can’t hide beneath my sheets,
because I’ve read those words
before, and know that time
has come again for me.
I am no writer,
I am no poet.
