Faced with all the seriousness
all the theories and the counterarguments
to Life, all the deadpan walls of text
sitting darkly against the light;
smilingly sometimes I open my jackets
and let in the joy. I'm still able to.
Listening to new music on a Sunday afternoon,
feeling the gushing waves of wind that slam doors
on the vastness of my skin, my hair.
Conversing with Cummings in the corridors.
Deep inside me, how my heart beats
to the nuances of Times New Roman, 12.
It'll be okay, won't it?
The grass is green, the horizon is lapping
at my windows, and the purple November sunset
will stretch across the sky in glory, glory, glory,
today evening. It will.
I might not always write great poetry
but you must understand I feel it, always,
in my bones; I might not be able to prise apart
my festering flesh from my bones with
the knife of wisdom, but I know, I know
I will find essence in the marrow that makes me.
Nothing tangible, perhaps, but something,
something that marks out the freckles on my
skin of gold, that lights up my tawny eyes
in sunshine, that makes sure I find poetry
in the beastliest, most brutal corners of existence.
I will find birdsong and seashells.
I will live this life (I want to)
so desperately well, so marvellously fully.
My poetry begins and ends with the I because,
because, it is all I have to watch the world through;
morality, temperance, knowledge, will they escape me?
Am I doing this right? Please, please
let me write romantic poetry as long as I live;
I love Eliot but I want to look at the world
with the eyes of Wordsworth.
Or at least always find a river from which to write from,
fields of daffodils to trace along my arms, and in the darkest
mountains, a leech-gatherer to advise me well.
Please, please, let me out of cities, let me live and not languish,
let me carry a box of rain and a yellow watch, let me escape from
time that passes like a slow-burning cigarette on a chilly evening.
I might find nothing new, travelling this world,
where every path is worn out, and some paved
(with the dreams of the downtrodden). But
please, please, let me not give up Hope
just because all the evidence suggests I should.
Let me take pleasure in every step I take,
every candle-lit evening, every stranger's smile,
every horizon I make my winding way towards.
Let me.