Poetic Scruples

I'll pick apart this poem

long before it's even written

Some usual phrase deletions

expletive substitutions

nasty mid-afternoon purges

Post-exceeded recommended brain-laxative dosage

and stuff flows faster

than I can back it up process-integrate-edit-transcribe

So pace...not an option

Plus I already been judged

and quartered

purposely failed assessments

I didn't want to take in the first damn place

last place

exhaled breath space between stanzas

with them too

suffocation-clingy and force-of-gravity-overbearing entities

who ventured in from previous lifetimes—don't ask me how

—gifting a multiplicity of complexities

subdural to my consciousness

that they felt safe (of all times???) to share now

Really?

Now???

With this

ain't-got-enough-body-mind-soul-to-hand-pen-connections

I'm already spilling out

early 20th-century rum runner maritime expeditions

Spring Equinox New Moon Festivals

Enkutatash*

Pre-colonial invasion living

and seven marriages

over timespans I cannot trace

to fit inside an impossible haiku

an improbable limerick

or acrostic I'll still be editing 'til after kingdom come

Yeah

hurts eyes

but that spark

good for at least two attempts with jumper cables

to a battery low on juice

if anyone still does that this century

or sits down with pen and paper to write anymore

Yet I'm sure they'll say

that 'off-the-hinges' type poet

guaranteed to script some mental lines

rip ‘em to shreds

then pick at what's left 'til it bleeds

*Enkutatash is the New Year in Ethiopia and Eritrea. It translates to mean "gift of jewels."

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