i think why i keep coming back to poetry is because...well, it might have something to do with narcissistic self-obsession, but i think it also has to do with the fact that poems NEVER express what you think you want them to. or what i want them to, at least. and what singing has taught me is that this isn't a bad thing. you don't control what you make.
someday i'll go back to the metropolitan museum of art, and i'll go and find that late monet painting of the stroked-in water lilies against the purple ground, and i'll cry, not just because it's beautiful, but because i'll remember seeing it the first time, and my tears from then.
right now, i'm shaking with a sadness born of longing. it's a beautiful feeling...a summer feeling.
religious poem
i looked down
and thought, what the hell did i bring?
what was i thinking, to wish to place
gold and myrrh into tiny hands, as if
he could even close his pellucid fingers
around such heavy things?
his eyes were closed
and his mother looked
wary, as if we would
attempt to take him
or say one
of a thousand things
she'd already heard,
and i thought, what the hell
am i doing here?
and then he woke,
and i looked to his face
and realized that
son of god or no,
son of god or no,
no journey of mine
had ever been
less of a waste.
his hand was
barely big enough
to wrap
around my finger.
later when we'd left
i thought back to nights
crossing the desert
to come to him--
the scent of frankincense
had been thick
when i held it to my face,
the sick longing dreams
of a king i had had
had been tinged
with that smell.
and then i thought of
the smell of him
and knew
that even such sickness
was a benediction:
nothing
had passed,
but all
was changed.
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