Poetry Monday

PaduanBenedick — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:35:17 +0000

Good afternoon, dear reader. After a very unintentional four-and-a-half month hiatus, I’m back with a little ditty just to let you know that I’m still around. I promise to catch you up on the happenings of late, but the short version of the story is that I’m alive and well and looking forward to reconstructive surgery in the next couple of months. More to come, but for now, please enjoy the following poem (written on or around 27 October 2009).

Hollow

Finding hollowness where once substance was held
I deny the metaphors and the dry humor
Of the practitioners of fiction who wield
Their empty wands of care and superstition
For if I but choose to renege upon my own convictions
Their construct of cards
Jokers all
Will collapse upon its own encumbrance
And nothing shall remain but my pain
Yet in that moment of clarity
What can emerge but a new superstition
A new metaphor
A unique caltrop
Is this moment more than I see
Or am I as delusional as those who seek to find me
Lost as I am in my own world and mind and faith and
Rotting flesh
The stench of which is apparently offensive only to me
And more so than the rank hypocrisy of the purveyors
Of snake oil and charms
Wordlessly I speak I cry out I call I swear
An oath of vengence that falls upon the ears
Dead and deaf
Of my birthright and my gift
Stripped of all efficacy
I must choose either to face the world
Powerless
Or fade away into that very nothingness
Signified by my own sound and fury
And I find that I relish not these so called choices
Finding each of them a lie
Spoken by a mute fool
To an ass
Back broken
By his time at the yoke

Cancer Can Bite Me » poetry

Poetry Monday