FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO REJECT MY POEMS [Part II]

II

ATTENTION

take my poems and let them live

but not as teeth marks on your flesh-

stinging, widening your sad eyes as my verbs

make you cringe and my nouns send shivers

pulsing through your chilling bones

strangely of death i write but strangely more

not my own

i have seen my funeral before:

my mother weeping and my father dead

and three little boys and a little girl wishing

for something more from their fallen uncle than

"you are not my own"

but that is for my own mind to ponder

none of your concern

i have spent nights stooping hardly

from far too much of too much

and the hair of the dog which bit me

because i bit him first

but that is for my own stomach to churn over

none of your concern

to you i will not shift thoughts to my veiny wrists

or my neck too far bony

or anything that seems to steal my breath from the depths

of my lungs or take my blood

in its pulsing smoothness

because if i wished solely to pull a Plath

or a thing of the like it is

none of your concern

still my harks are subtle next to those

which speak of such things

or take pride in what vulgarness one can put

on a page

what one can do to make another spill out sounds

and cries of disgust

the self is one these pages

and vulgar is not my self

i wish my poems to be whispers in the corner of the brain

where you can draw upon them in times

of something good&pure

or notsogood&notsopure

my self wants to keep your eyes on the poem

for the poem

for my self

but not my self that steeps in darkness

and hides behind functions of the unholy body

or death by means of death of the self

or the pills or liquors or smokes that make so many

write nothings

(for what are things if not from the self unaltered?

nothings)

let my poems grab you and let them hold you

but not for a think gaudy and loveless

let my tears be tears

my body be a body

my soul a soul

my poem a poem

not a cry

not a seizing thing

not for you