other to lover

Poetry was Other
a phenomenon,
I went to uncover
this peculiar lexicon

We became acquainted,
candidly speaking about
what is faded
I just needed to be allowed
to talk about what life has amounted to

So we talked,
talked about walking in beauty
the word sleep and its variations
talked about feeling “fucked up”
rain and unmoving clouds
and the formal feelings that follow pain
talked about loving after love
the soul’s daring
and hope’s feathers
and now fallen trees across the road

Poetry became a friend
and a lover,
it was no longer other
and on it I could depend,
I turned towards it in my darkest hours
just to take back a sense of power
and it brought me more happiness
than all the world’s “loving-kindness”
and meditation ever could

If you ask what is poetry
I will tell you knowingly
it is not these words
poetry is soul
it is damage control
a dialect that cajoles
my broken heart
to not be so lonely

But it is more,
with consistence
it lays bare my existence
taking account of
everything I was,
I am, I want to be,
and everything I am afraid of becoming

Poetry wounds as it soothes,
it the lover that knows you better
than you know yourself
so when it speaks with its measured
empathetic determination
it cuts your heart’s hardened leather
more deeply

This is the price to pay to feel alive
to feel normal again
I have been so deprived
of feeling normal,
that can mean pain and pleasure walk hand-in-hand
but that is better than the paranormal
and steady unfeeling that has followed me

I do not write these words,
poetry has its own volition
the soul its own ambition,
and it desires to be known.