Wednesday, May 19, 2010

What Others Wish


I know what they’d have me write.
No rhyme; no sunshine bright days,
With clothes white ‘pon the lines.

All women old. Never young,
Hasty in labor nor exuberant.
Just beat, bent and bellicose.

I should find murkiness
In my attic like an owl,
Stuffed, who never blinks.

My fright should be daily fed.
Not by my imagination,
But the reality they’d have me have.

Why should my memories
Be dusty, creaky events now,
And unmercifully mordant as well?

Life wasn’t always gleeful, true,
But why only moments miserable?
Is that the past all poets embrace?

Who are these arbiters of the craft
Insisting on cluttered dim alleyways
Littered with our trashcan lives

Instead of just the beauty of words?



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