Words have power
which is why I love to play with them.
I turn a pretty phrase
and arrange words in pictures of speech.
At times the pictures please many,
other times, only me.
Words pick at scabs inside me.
They probe old wounds I had thought were healed.
Occasionally, the probing draws a crowd.
It's like watching video of a car accident.
You can rewind and play it back in slo-mo,
watch the skater boy kiss concrete stairs.
Our attraction to vicarious sadism for fun and profit
is odd but not terribly abnormal.
If we dress it up correctly
it becomes worthy of praise and admiration.
The talk pictures I paint wear a respectable necktie
The putty and paint of literary restraint
cover deep gouges and long, slow scratches.
Watch the poet swan dive off the merry-go-round
and tear out his fingernails with a pen and a notebook.
There are times when the cruelty
in my black heathen heart rises up
like bile in a bad belly.
and I think things that are so vile and crude
I ask myself,
"Why you gotta be like that?"
I spit out the blowtorch and the hatchet,
I have a wee glass of something old and strong,
I pick up a pen
and try to tell myself something that makes sense,
without burning bridges or stabbing necks.
Sláinte.