You don’t like poems
You say you don’t understand art
I wrote you one
Filled with extravagant images of gods and seas and human hearts
I threw flowers at your feet because they poured out of me
And you didn’t ask for them
And you didn’t ask to read them
And I’m sorry
Because I live in a strange sea of overwhelm
Of wet eyes and restless feet and hands that grab and speak
At feelings and sights and metaphors
And you’re so comfortably dry and warm on solid ground
And I want to leave you there, because you look so pretty
But I want to drag you in here, because it isn’t fair
Maybe I would join you if I could?
I would study a science PhD with you. I would do washing with you. Cook with you. Walk with surety, speak little and only of things I know, shrug off tears, glance over the pain of others, glance over the pain of myself
Not stray into the endless dark places
And not write poems
These strange, personless poems, loved by no one
Given straight to the charity shop
Fretted over, cried into, kneaded and fiddled and grasped in an anxious sweaty fist
Over used, crumpled tissue
That I put in a gilt box, and give to you, my lover
Oh how embarrassing
To be born an artist
To have this wet, messy need
That pours all over clean white pages
So that everyone can see
And disregard
My inside out mind
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