I Wrote a Beautiful Poem Yesterday
This is my first ever really nasty poem. I stared at the page for hours, because this is the poem that was there for me, and I didn't want to write it. I am a little bit afraid, based on the myth of light and dark being in balance, that there might be one of these inside me for every hopeful poem I have ever written.
I wrote a beautiful poem yesterday. Today I want
to french-kiss a beautiful stranger, urinate on
the card catalog, wander in and eat from other
people's plates, walk down the sidewalk, stare
everyone in the eyes, and never move over even an
inch. Whatever it was yesterday that took my
private pain and made it ring with truth, I want
that thing writhing on the ground with a knife
sticking out of of its eye socket. That part of
me which wrote the turn, where light and hope were
revealed as inseperable compainions to the
desperate darkness, I want that guy strapped into
a flaming convertible tumbling down a cliff while
I laugh and laugh. In fact, I have a new poem
about flowers and time and it is so beautiful
until the last line so wrong and ruinous that all
you want to do afterwards is go outside and break
a promise and something made of glass.
