Sunday, May 21, 2017

Writing is a trip

Sometimes my poems discover themselves about halfway through.

The line that ended up being the title of this one actually came to me first–that doesn’t happen often, and when it does the rest of the poem rarely fits any kind of structure, but I like to preserve the original spark if I can. That’s part of what poetry is, I think; inspiration comes in a word or an idea, and if you follow, it’ll take you places.

 

Life Is Just One Big Waiting Room

We dedicate entire rooms to it,

sterile spaces carved out

in pleasing rectangles, something to catch the eye

and tether the mind

to its predictable corners.

 

There is comfort in predicability,

in earth-toned paint and

coarse carpet that doesn’t protest unmeasured

footfalls. Paint on walls won’t betray you,

not like people.

Our skin is less like paint than carpet

running in patches of rough,

sometimes smooth,

knit together layer by layer.

Its seams only appear when damaged,

layers pulling apart just so to reveal

the raw underneath. We spill out

red between the cracks

until the pain extracts itself from out bodies,

observable from a safe distance,

leaving tissue to be rewoven, scars

marking the places where our humanity once escaped.

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