Someone once laughingly suggested to me that poetry was for 'sissies'. I beg to differ. |
Sissy You’ve been calling me names, and I don’t even know you. I can’t help but listen when your voice splits through the air, overwhelming the magpies and crickets. You impose yourself, shooting electric assertions, taking down the trees, igniting fires and burning holes into our skin. No one looked for cover; we thought it pleasant enough, blinded by the glimmer of glassy naïveté. Artless fools with ashen skin. Weak-stemmed daisies wincing in the garden. Your mark is lit by green beacons, steadying you. You’ve struck Charles, my good dead friend, between the eyes, because, he wasn’t looking. You didn’t have to run, but still, you felt the need to stick your tongue out, and you thought yourself fearsome. With a roar and suspicious spit, you push me down and reassert your position. Hunkered down, surrounded by yourself, you smile some strange satisfaction, thinking you‘d bested me or perhaps stolen my cap. It’s when I begin to speak that I see the fear in your eyes. You never knew our Syl, only dreamed of trying to decipher her, and even now, when I attempt to give you the clues to her language, the little I know, you wave me off, as you would a street-beggar or poisonous whore; more threatening to you than I’d ever known. I’ve never liked blood; never been one to marvel at its metallic taste or the winsomeness of its reds. We all know how to spill it, and there’s no distinction in the ability to bleed. I prefer black ink, the rich, onyx oil with potential and venerable power; it knocks the boorish bullies onto their backs, into the dirt. I can make a fist, or yowl with the menace of a vengeful cat. Boiling over, scalding those who dare to push, I possess that same strength which you have wrongly claimed to own. Show me, how you hold a pen; half-cocked gun, full of yellow feathers. Though Syl and Charlie are long past cold, lying silent, with brittle, sophic smiles they still possess the clout, to flatten you. |