The way I write
Is me
Navigating a minefield...
The
Line
Breaks
Are where I step carefully over
Explosive devices...
It could be said
That they are like
Dance steps,
But it's self-conscious interpretive dance,
Rather than
Choreographed movements...
It's definitely not ballet...
It's also a fear
Of the margin...
I hate when the lines
Are automatically broken
By the natural confines of the page...
So I wrestle that control
Away from the blank book
Or word processor...
I refuse to be contained or constrained
By "natural" limits...
This gets exaggerated
Now that I mostly stumble
Through the minefield
On a cellphone
Instead of sprawling my blood
Onto the pages of blank journals...
I hate endings...
I use ellipses instead of periods
To end a sentence...
There is always more to say
That I have left unsaid
No matter how much
I literally say...
I trail off when I speak
Rather than come to a full stop...
I mumble a lot,
So I get cut off
In conversation
By people who don't know how to listen...
But I some times
Finish other people's sentences,
Which they hate,
Especially when I say
Exactly what they were going to say...
My impulse to help,
When they seem to be struggling
For the right words to say,
Is seen as impatience,
Which, to tell the truth, I am...
I'll expect you
To put up with my pauses,
While I grit my teeth
Through your own...
Yes,
I can be a hypocrite that way...
A quiet elitist
Mumbling
In a way that appears to be
Under my breath...
But if I were to use my natural voice,
Both deep and loud,
I get accused of
"Raising my voice"...
It's that minefield
I'm always delicately navigating...
I throw rocks
A few yards ahead of me
To see what explodes,
And to see what is a safe place
To place my next step...
I realize
It makes me look like a drunk
Stumbling across a frozen pond...
Charlie Chaplin would be proud...
It's a bit of physical comedy,
Even when I'm trying to be serious...
A touch of the drunken master
Fighting flawlessly
While under the influence...
If I win,
It was totally accidental...
If I lose,
I planned it that way
So I can accidentally win
From another angle
On another day...
Take you by surprise
In an unsurprising fashion...
Rising from the dead
To feast on those juicy brains...
But the ice is always too thin...
And the margins
Are always
Too close together...
My fear of falling
Over the edge of the Earth
Is too great...
That's where the dragons live...
Or, at least, the ones that I imagine...
x
No comments:
Post a Comment