You Once Asked Why

Because sometimes breathing isn’t enough,

Because sometimes bleeding isn’t enough,

The dull thumping in your chest needs a name,

The red in your veins

purrs

When in smells ink glide smooth,

Carrying bits of brain matter,

Flakes of memories,

Scars from your heart’s molting periods,

Down your arm to your five-

Finger river delta

Because it’s music too.

Because the sky is blue…

Poetry sways the masses

                                    (it makes me cry)

holds out a hand and up

                                                            and up

                                    and down

                                                                        and down

Jumpstarts that boogie,

Stamps like Jazz shoots fast

Staccato blasts,

            Then rocks the cradle into

                        A soothing snore

Because it’s cerebral

And corporeal.

Because it has feathers (and talons)

It stings the body (electric and metric)

And sometimes,

                                    You just hate it.

But don’t worry, that’s a good sign.

Because your fingers twitch at night

And your tongue itches to push these bubbling flames

Over your teeth

            (they fight each other, pushing and stumbling and splintering as they reverberate off your lips into an empty room, no longer solely yours).

Because you can’t remember which you is the real

One scrawled in the back of a school notebook

Or saved on your desktop

Or in the margin of your favorite book

And when it first hit you, this clarity, this

Decomposition of the barriers separating your heart and your mind,

You looked around the tiny, simple middle school classroom

And realized you would always be separated from the blind ambition of the apathetic

Because sometimes being isn’t enough.